

THE 



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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 


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tianity 


SUBJECTS: 

I. Ecce Homo ; or, The Personality of Christ. 

II. The Apostolic Age ; or, The Conflict between 
Caesar and the Christians. 

III. The Reformation. 

IV. Agnosticism ; or, Popular Phases of Doubt. 

V. The Great Miracle Problem. 

VI. Immortality. 


FRANK A. MORGAN, Chicago, 111. 

President of the Mutual Lyceum Bureau. 

His record of four hundred solid week- 
engagements is without a parallel in 
the history of the American Platform. 

For Information, Dates, etc., address The Publishers. 


Excerpts from Opinions Written by More 
Than a Thousand Ministers and Editors 

Pittsburgh, Pa. 

S. B. McCORMICK, D.D., LL.D., Pres. Pittsburgh University. 

They are as eloquent as they are powerful. 

Chicago, 111. 

E. L. BARKER, Editor Lyceumite. 

He is one of the few great lecturers of America. 

Minneapolis, Minn. 

REV. A. B. MARSHALL, D.D., First Presby. Ch. 

They are elegant in statement. They glow with eloquence. 
Sometimes he is an historian, sometimes a poet, sometimes a scientist, 
but always an orator. His series is unrivalled upon the platform. 

Elmira, N. Y. 

THE PRESS 

The remarkable Koehne Lectures came to a close last night with 
an audience that simply packed the First Presbyterian Church. No 
such series has ever been given in Elmira. 

REV. T. A. MILLS, Ph. D. 

The most powerful presentation of Christian Evidences before the 
American Churches. 

Laconia, N. H. 

REV. R. L. SWAIN, Ph. D., First Cong’l Ch. 

The greatest series before the public. 

Watertown, N. Y. 

REV. A. M. BRODIE, D.D., First Presby. Ch. 

I have had Dr. Koehne three times during my ministry, and know 
of no one his equal to powerfully stimulate and enrich the faith of the 
church, or to break down the defences of unbelief. 

REV. W. E. BIEDERW OLF, D.D. 

He is one of the few really great lecturers of the day. 

Toledo, Ohio. 

REV. GEORGE R. WALLACE, D.D., First Cong’l Ch. 

I engaged this series three times. To my knowledge there are no 
lectures upon this theme equal to his upon the American platform. 

For Information, Dates, etc., address The Publishers. 



Excerpts from Opinions Written by More 
Than a Thousand Ministers and Editors 

Williamsport, Pa. 

REV. W. C. HOGG, First Presby. Ch. 

As studies, they were exhaustive and profound ; as addresses, they 
were indiscribably eloquent. 

Auburn, N. Y. 

REV. F. W. PALMER, D. D., Central Presby. Ch. 

I believe his lectures delivered in a thousand of our churches 
would be of incalculable value to sound faith. 

Corning, N. Y. 

REV. J. C. BALL, D.D., First Presby. Ch. 

These lectures are marvels of power and eloquence. I have 
heard a number of men attempt to present the great themes of Chris- 
tianity, but Dr. Koehne surpasses them all. 

Lewisburg, Pa. 

REV. W. C. THOMAS, D.D. 

This is a university town and has many lectures, but it never had 
such a popular course as this. 

JOHN K. McLEAN, D.D., Pres. Pacific Theological Seminary, Cal. 

I do not remember that the work of any speaker in the twenty- 
three years of my pastorate in Oakland has been held in higher 
appreciation. 

Johnstown, N. Y. 

REV. CHARLES McKENZIE, First Presby. Ch. 

His lectures dealing with the foremost difficulties of this age of 
doubt will, I venture to say, be epoch-making for a multitude of people 
in this community. 

Chicago, 111. 

REV. E. P. HILL D.D., Professor of Homiletics, 

McCormick Theological Seminary. 

Thoughful pastors have long felt the need of something calculated 
to reach thinking men to whom the evangelist and his choir do not appeal. 
Multitudes have become bewildered by the debate waged within the 
church over the Christian premises. They are wondering what is left. 
They are eager for a scholarly, intelligible defence of the faith. By 
long and severe study Dr. Koehne has fitted himself for this task. He 
presents his apologetic argument with compelling logic, dramatically 
and is often electrifying. 

For Information, Dates, etc., address The Publishers. 





























. 


























































































JOHN B. KOEHNE, D.D. 

( Membership is with the Congregational Association of Chicago.) 



A Challenge 

to 

Modern Skepticism 


By 

JOHN B. KOEHNE, D.D. 


Pfjtlatielpfjta 

FERRIS & LEACH 

29 South Seventh Street 



Copyright, 1911, by 
JOHN B. KOEHNE 
Entered at Stationers Hall 


•> 


©CI.A286512 


THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED 
TO THE MEMORY OF 
MY WIFE 


j&arij Utlligan iCoriptr 


PREFACE. 


This book contains the lecture on “Ecce 
Homo! or, The Personality of Christ,” and 
correlated material taken from several 
other discussions of this series of lectures, 
which for many years has been given as a 
platform message, before the churches of 
this country. 

Their publication redeems a promise, 
made to many business men, to put into 
print this address. 

The subject matter is left precisely as it 
has been delivered, hundreds of times, 
therefore contains the weaknesses and limi- 
tations involved in the attempt to transmute 
speech into type. 

At the time the series was prepared for 
the platform, there was no thought of put- 
ting any of the lectures into a book. 
Therefore no record was kept of the au- 
thorities consulted. But to name this list 
of books would be practically to name the 
works that belong to Christological litera- 
ture. To those familiar with this realm of 
study, this is unnecessary. I wish, how- 
ever, to make grateful acknowledgment to 


6 


Preface. 


the officers of Mansfield College, Oxford, 
who so kindly gave me the freedom of the 
College libraries, when the series was re- 
vised there, in the summer of 1899. 

It is needless to say that I am greatly in- 
debted to the inspiration of Dr. Fairbairn’s 
works; also to that beautiful English book 
entitled, “ Leading Ideas of the Gospels.” 
To Victor Cousin, Hegel, Hugo, for sugges- 
tions regarding human greatness. Among 
Americans, to Bushnell, and to the Bishop 
of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, 
whose book on “ The Man of Galilee ” was 
invaluable. 

This gives me opportunity also to express 
my appreciation of my friend, Mr. Fred 
Farwell, of New London, N. H. A nobler 
manhood I never knew. Without his coun- 
sel and his consummate genius in construc- 
tive criticism, my platform work would 
have suffered irreparably. 


A (EljaUettgr to Mniimt ^fepplirtam 


CONTENTS. 

Preface 5 

Prelude : An Indictment of Unitarianism 14 

CHAPTER T. 

THE PREPARATION FOR CHRIST THROUGH JUDAISM. 

The World’s Map 3000 Years Ago 35 

The Origin of The Hebrew People 37 

Jacob in Egypt 38 

Pharaoh 40 

Why did God use the Jewish Race?. 41 

Supernatural qualities of that Race 43 

The Tragedy of that Race 44 

The Jewish Priesthood 40 

The Mosaic Constitution 46 

Moses; Angelo’s Marble dream of Moses 48 

The Book of Judges 49 

David and Shakespeare compared ; the genius of 

Hebrew poetry 51 

The Psalms 52 

The Book of Job 53 

Hamlet and Job 54 

CHAPTER II. 

THE PREPARATION FOR CHRIST THROUGH JUDAISM; 
THE PROPHETS. 

Elijah 56 

The Jewish Religion; Joel; Jonah 57, 58 

Amos; Hosea 58 

Isaiah 60 

Nahum; Habakkuk 61, 62 

Micah; Zephaniah; Jeremiah 62-64 

Daniel 65 

Ezekiel ; Obadiah 66 


8 


Contents. 


Haggai; Zechariah 67, 68 

Malachi; The Hebrew Prophet; His genius 69 

The Jewish Race as a Prophecy 70 

The Old Testament viewed from Matthew’s stand- 
point 72 

The Supernatural qualities of the Prophet 73 

The Prophets as Universal men 75 

Prophecy and the Skeptic’s dilemma 76 

The Messianic Vision 77 

CHAPTER III. 

CHRIST CONTRASTED WITH THE SCHOOLS. 

Socrates and Crito 80 

Christ not educated by the Jewish Schools 82 

Only educated men have ruled the world 84 

Christ the exception to this rule 84 

His many-sidedness as a Teacher 85 

His Method 87 

His Authority 89 

The Skeptic’s theory of His education 91 

The attack by the Pharisees , 93 

Christ’s solutions unimpeached 93 

Analysis of the Lord’s Prayer 94 

The relation of that prayer to Civilization 95 

The relation of that prayer to Art; “ The Angelus ” 97 

CHAPTER IV. 

CHRIST CONTRASTED WITH THE SCHOLARS. 

Christ responsible for the logical sequences of His 

Teachings 100 

Christ solved problems the Wise Men stated 102 

Skepticism like a mountain during the night 102 

Christ wonderful in what he did not teach 103 

The Sermon on the Mount 106 

Christ compared with Wise Men 107 

The difference between Christ and Wise Men 108 

The mystery of death 110 

Christ’s knowledge of Himself Ill 


Contents. 


9 


Important things He did not do 112 

Some results of His influence 113 

His death solitary as His life 114 

The effect upon the world if His disciples were 
blotted out 115 


CHAPTER V. 

CHRIST CONTRASTED WITH GREAT MEN. 

The Great Man; represents the spirit of the age; or, 


He is the embodiment of one idea 118 

The Reformer 119 

The Poet 119 

The genius of Poetry 120 

Great men come in groups 122 

Great man, the picture of the nation in action; often 

the product of the age 123 

The weaknesses of great men 125 


The great man is unconscious of his greatness; no 
man great in the eyes of his intimate friends; 
Christ a miracle of multi -personality. The 

great man labors for a race; great men, their 
temporary influence; men do not die for great 


men 126, 127 

Great men are duplicated in each generation 128 

Christ unlike the greatest men in the world 130 

Was Christ a Prophet? 131 


CHAPTER VI. 

Christ’s influence during the dark ages. 


The misunderstanding of Christ and the result.... 134 
The difference between the Church and the State. . 135 

The Dark Ages; the prophet Dante 136 

The tragical night of a thousand years 138 

The Reformation; the fall of Constantinople 139 

Its effect upon civilization 140 

The reaction within the Church 141 

The advent of Savonarola in Florence 142 

His death 145 


10 


Contents. 


What the Reformation meant 140 

Great Men of the hour . 147 

The genius of Liberty 148 

The Reformation; the men beyond Luther 149 

The glories of the Seventeenth Century 151 

The political effect of the Reformation upon Europe. 152 

Was the Reformation an accident? 153 

The New Testament ideals involved in the Reforma- 
tion 154 

The World’s Empires 155 

America contrasted with these; the Ballot box. . . . 156 

CHAPTER VII. 

THE SKEPTIC’S DILEMMA; ANALYSIS OF THE FOUR GOSPELS. 

The natural proofs required of a Divine Nature. . . . 158 

The Christ as portrayed by Matthew 159 

The meaning of the healing of the leper 160 

Mark’s Gospel addressed to the Roman mind 161 

Luke’s Gospel an appeal to the Greek genius 163 

Christ’s attitude toward Woman 164 

The Oriental attitude toward Woman 167 

The Greek attitude; the rejected elements of society 168 

Luke’s Gospel, its influence upon Art 169 

John’s Gospel, its Spiritual significance 170 

The Prologue of John’s Gospel 171 

The Fourfold Christ 173 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Part I. the skeptic’s dilemma; the mysterious 

PERSONALITY OF CHRIST. 

The difference between Christ and Men 175 

The Virtues in His life 176 

His Isolation 178 

The fragmentary character of the records 179 

Singular phases of His character 180 


Contents. 


11 


Past II. the mysterious contradictions in his life. 

Wherein He was unlike men and like Nature 181 

His feminine attributes 183 

Jesus, the “ Ideal ” for Man, Woman and Child. . . . 185 

His consciousness of power 186 

His attitude toward the social leper 187 

The artistic conception of Christ is sexless 188 

The blending of opposite traits of character 189 

His earth life merged in the supernatural 190 

CHAPTER IX. 

THE SKEPTIC’S DILEMMA; RATIONALISTIC THEORIES 
CONCERNING CHRIST. 

Christ’s violation of the Law of Heredity 191 

Christ measured against the genius of His Race. . . . 192 

Christ’s influence upon Races 194 

Christ the Sphinx of History 196 

Christ contrasted with Napoleon 198 

The sinlessness of Christ 199 

His knowledge of Men 200 

Christ’s Prophecies 201 

His supernatural claims 202 

The Skeptic’s theory concerning His goodness .... 204 

The limitations of Shakespeare 205 

The limitations of the Poets 206 

Axioms regarding truth 206-215 

The Unitarian’s limitations 216 

CHAPTER X. 

THE SKEPTIC’S DILEMMA ; “ THE FORGERY THEORY.” 

Either Christ was historical or He was not 217 

The intellectual difficulties of “ The Forgery 

Theory ” 218 

The Gentile Prophecies 219 

The Jewish Prophecies 222 

The Temptation scene, the alternative presented . . 223 

The Speech of a Divine Man 224 

The Works of a Divine Man 226 


12 


Contents. 


Where “ The Forgery Theory ” breaks down 228 

Did Civilization produce Him 229 

Was He an accident? 230 

The “Cloud of Witnesses” 231-234 

CHAPTER XI. 

CHRIST’S KINGDOM CONTRASTED WITH PLATO’S REPUBLIC; 
THE THEORY. 

The moral supremacy of the Jewish genius over 

the Greeks and Romans 235 

Supernatural attributes of Judaism; Christ meas- 
ured against the genius of His Race 237 

The Age of Plato 239 

The Age when Christ was born 240 

Bethlehem! 241 

Plato’s Republic and Christ’s Kingdom in con- 
trast 242-246 

CHAPTER XII. 

CHRIST’S KINGDOM CONTRASTED WITH THE ROMAN 
EMPIRE; THE FACT. 

The poet Virgil as a Prophet 247 

“ The Golden Age ” 249 

“ The Fullness of Time ” 249 

Petronius as a witness 250 

Roman morals 251 

The Tragical condition of the times 252 

Caesar! 254 

The ruins of Imperialism 255 

The dying hour of Rome compared with a Sunset. . 256 

The Genius of the new Kingdom 258 

Its supernatural claims 259 

Its supernatural gifts 261 

The attack by the Caesars 262 

The triumphs of “The New Kingdom” 264 

“Les Miserables! ” 265 

Christ weeping over Jerusalem 266 

Christ compared with the world’s statesmen 267 

“ The New Kingdom,” unlike anything in history . . 269 


Contents. 


13 


CHAPTER XIII. 

CHRISTIAN AND PAGAN MORALS. 

Christ the Test and Ideal of Morality 271 

Christian Morals 272 

Christian and Pagan Morals 273 

The failure of Pagan Moralists 275 

What the Pagan Moralist overlooked 276 

The Pagan theory of “ Duty ” 278 

The Christian theory of “ A Golden Age ” 279 

The Stoical School 282 

The Stoic, his degeneracy 283 

“ God’s Grace,” the supernatural element in Chris- 
tianity 284 

CHAPTER XIV. 

CHRISTIANITY AND PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

Historical Axioms regarding religion 286 

Unique features of Christianity 288 

“The Gospel” 289 

Christianity Inclusive and Exclusive 291 

Christianity the Ultimate Religion 292 

The difference between Christianity and the World’s 

Religions 293-296 

The Orient compared with Niagara 297 

The Old Religions and Civilizations; they were 

“ School Masters ” 299 

The Vision of the Empires 300-306 

Christ’s great challenge to the Skeptic 307- 


PRELUDE. 


AN INDICTMENT OF UNITARIANISM. 

At the Diet of Worms, Rome affirmed 
and tried to vindicate the supreme authority 
of the Church. Upon that ancient principle 
Rome rests to-day. When Martin Luther 
left the Council, a new principle was intro- 
duced into the history of religion, “ The 
Right of Private Judgment.” 

While this principle is one of the intel- 
lectual glories of the human mind and of 
Christianity, one logical and injurious re- 
sult was, Protestant Christianity subdi- 
vided itself into denominations. To-day, 
Protestantism presents the paradox of fly- 
ing upon the same mast the Banner of the 
Cross and the flags representing human 
thinking. Luther, Calvin, Knox, Wesley, 
Zwingli — these were men ; but time has 
changed them into creedal names but little 
less in glory, in the interpretation of Chris- 
tianity, than that of Jesus Christ himself. 

At heart, however, among the denomina- 
tions, there is unswerving loyalty to One 
Master. 


Prelude. 


15 


But the menace to Protestanism is the 
principle, “ The Right of Private Judg- 
ment.” 

For example: to-day, in New England 
Congregationalism, we see the miracles of 
Christ being attacked by The Congregation - 
a list and some of the most distinguished 
t heologians. This involves the denial of the 
authenticity of the New Testament, the de- 
nial of Christ's incarnation, and of His 
resurrection, and must culminate in abso- 
lute surrender to Unitarianism. 

In the Middle West, the warfare is going 
on in the various denominations upon the 
plea for “ Liberalism ” and “ Broad-Mind- 
edness,” expressed in the concrete term, 
“ New Theology,” which is Unitarianism 
under a new name. 

Any theology that steps outside of the 
personality of Christ, His words and works, 
as interpreted through the Cross, is false. 
Christianity involves the idea of “ Redemp- 
tion ; ” and for man to introduce his own 
thinking into the plans of God, is to im- 
peach the mind of God. 

Unitarianism has for its major premise, 
u The Right of Private Judgment.” Its 
minor premise, is the popular affirmation of 


16 


Prelude . 


Agnosticism, “ That which cannot be dem- 
onstrated within the terms of human reason 
cannot be true.” The conclusion is inevi- 
table. Unitarianism is to-day the “ Icono- 
clast ” among the schools of Christian the- 
ology. 

But Unitarianism refuses to be a school; 
it calls itself a Christian denomination, and 
looks with relentless contempt upon all the 
Evangelical denominations as “ narrow,” 
“ bigoted,” “ clinging to old theologies that 
were long ago outgrown.” 

It is the most insolent paradox perpe- 
trated in the annals of the world’s religions. 
It calls itself “ Christian,” and denies the 
supreme affirmation of Christianity, “ The 
Deity of Christ.” 

It poses as “ broad.” No Jew, no Mo- 
hammedan, no Catholic Jesuit, was ever 
more intolerant, narrow, bigoted and un- 
compromising. Any Evangelical theologian 
can assent to all that the Unitarian may 
affirm concerning the humanity of Christ. 
He can see that, and more. The Unitarian 
seesnothing in Christ, save“ The Son of Man,” 
and he froths with anger if you enlarge the 
word “ divinity ” beyond the limits of his 
puny personality. 


Prelude. 


17 


“ Broad !” Does the Unitarian yield any- 
thing in any conference with Evangelical 
Churchmen looking toward a compromise? 
Not one inch. Every concession must be 
made by the Evangelicals. When the Con- 
gregationalists and the Unitarians in New 
England met in ecclesiastical conference, or 
even in a fellowship meeting, what did the 
Unitarian yield? Nothing! 

It is a school built on negations, there- 
fore it can affirm nothing. It attacks Gene- 
sis, impeaches the historical data of the 
Pentateuch, makes the Psalms the music of 
earth, and the visions of the prophets mean- 
ingless dreams. Pausing at the New Tes- 
tament with the denial of our Lord’s deity, 
the word “ Jesus ” is substituted for the 
word “ Christ;” the Miracles are explained 
according to the laws of psychic phenomena; 
the Resurrection of Christ is accounted for, 
either by open denial, or as an optical illu- 
sion, or as having simply a spiritual mean- 
ing. This makes room for an impeachment 
of the Bible, a denial of the authenticity of 
the New Testament, a denial of a revelation 
from God ; in short, involves chaos. 

If Jesus of Nazareth was “ The Son of 
Man,” as Unitarianism defines that term, if 


18 


Prelude. 


in Him did not dwell “ The fullness of the 
Godhead bodily,” Christianity becomes a 
man-made religion, having no higher au- 
thority than that of Mohammed, or Confu- 
cius, or Zoroaster. 

Nay more! These claim nothing super- 
natural. Christianity does. If Jesus 
Christ be not God incarnate, Christianity is 
built upon a lie. 

What is the great issue before the church 
to-day? 

It is not the problems, suggested by the 
scientist, that lie in the book of Genesis. It 
is not the historical data of the Pentateuch. 
It is not the place of the prophets in the 
Old Testament, whether or not what they 
said was inspired, nor whether what they 
said related to Jesus of Nazareth. The 
modern discussion regarding John’s gospel 
is not the great problem. Dr. Gordon, of 
Boston, has raised the question, "Is Chris- 
tianity dependent upon the Miracle?” He 
names this as the theological issue of the 
hour. 

There can be only one issue; either Jesus 
of Nazareth was the Eternal Father veiled 
in mortal flesh, or He was simply an intel- 
lectual prodigy, self-deluded and deceiving 


Prelude. 


19 


others. There is no middle ground. All 
other problems must yield supremacy to 
this, — that either Jesus of Nazareth was 
God Incarnate, or, He was not. 

When we accept the deity of Christ, the 
Old Testament becomes a manuscript lumi- 
nous as the sky. The Book of Genesis 
ceases to be a scientific statement regarding 
how things were done. It states the moral 
relationships between God and man, and 
man and man. It does not answer the 
question, “ How?” but “ Why ” things are 
as they are. It reveals not causes, but final 
causes. Conceding the deity of Christ, the 
Pentateuch describes the development of the 
spiritual consciousness of a Race. The 
Prophets cease to belong to a race, they be- 
come world men. Their speech contains the 
echoes of God’s thinking. They are the 
forerunners of Christ. Conceding the deity 
of Christ, John’s gospel ceases to be a bat- 
tle-ground ; the prologue in that gospel con- 
tains the philosophy of the skies. Conced- 
ing the deity of Christ, there is no miracle 
problem. Christ’s works are then the works 
of God, which are beyond human compre- 
hension. When Dr. Lyman Abbott and Dr. 


20 


Prelude . 


Gordon outline a definition of a miracle, 
then there is a miracle problem. But if 
Christ did the works accredited Him, they 
were as God’s works, impossible of analysis. 
It would be as easy for Dr. Abbott to per- 
form a miracle, as to define it. Because, to 
give a definition of a miracle, one must have 
knowledge of the forces employed, and the 
laws through which these forces operated. 
Since we do not know what force is, nor 
God’s method in creative processes, we must 
affirm that either Christ’s works were the 
works of God, therefore as mysterious as 
creation itself, or His works were those of 
a juggler, and He was an impostor. 

Therefore, all the problems involved in 
the Old and New Testaments are resolved 
into one question : “ Who was Jesus of Naz- 
areth?” 

Unitarianism affirms that Jesus of Naz- 
areth was divine as all men are divine, 
greater only in degree. This is an unequiv- 
ocal denial of the deity of Christ. 

The purpose of this book is, to prove that 
the Unitarian affirmation is absolutely 
false. 

The seriousness of the issue involved, like 


Prelude. 


21 


warfare, makes lawful every weapon of at- 
tack, or of defence. Unitarianism gives no 
quarter and asks none. 

“ Unitarianism/’ in this Prelude, does 
not mean a term used as a reproach to cer- 
tain individuals. This is not a war between 
men, but between schools of thought. Its 
first battle was fought when, far back in 
the centuries, Arius stood as the champion 
of Christ's humanity, excluding the idea of 
His deity. 

Two facts have always been flaunted in 
the face of Evangelical Christianity. First, 
the boast of the lovely character of men and 
women who are Unitarians. That is 
granted, but it proves nothing. There are 
also amiable savages in Africa. There are 
gentle natures in Asia. There are beautiful 
lives among the Mohammedans. Among 
Skeptics, Agnostics and Atheists are char- 
acters of extraordinary moral graces. No 
one would question Mr. Robert G. Inger- 
soll’s beautiful home life, and that his moral 
character was as far beyond reproach as 
that of Edward Everett Hale. The most 
zealous Prohibitionist would not deny that 
behind the garish window of the saloon are 
generous natures, while ofttimes we read of 


22 


Prelude. 


deeds of nobility and heroism large as the 
words themselves, wrought by inmates of 
the brothel. 

Second, we are asked to explain the fact 
that such a school can boast a splendid ar- 
ray of intellectual men and women; nay, a 
roll-call of essayists, novelists, scientists, 
historians, poets, scholars, orators, more fa- 
mous in literature than can be claimed by 
any evangelical denomination in this coun- 
try. 

That, too, is granted without debate. 

But that constitutes its condemnation. 
It poses as a religious organization, and 
gives birth only to men of literary distinc- 
tion. 

So did Stoicism in Athens and in the Ro- 
man Empire. That school created types of 
human greatness like these mentioned. 
Also, Stoicism, like Unitarianism, was as 
bitter and as relentless in its attack upon 
the supernatural in Christianity, and never 
surrendered until the school itself had per- 
ished. 

Strictly speaking, for the sake of intel- 
lectual decency, Unitarianism should not 
claim to be a religious denomination, but a 
school of ethics, Stoicism under a new name. 


Prelude. 


23 


The proof that it is not religious, and cer- 
tainly not a Christian denomination, is the 
fact that it does not give birth to reform- 
ers, saints, and angel-souled men and 
women ; — that is, human natures trans- 
figured with the ideal of the Cross. 

Analyze any Unitarian priest, and you 
analyze the Unitarian mind. He claims to 
be salt, to preserve the good of all religions. 
This moulds him into the most negative 
personality among the sons of men. The 
present hour — its high privileges; the fu- 
ture — its stern demands ; the past — its 
wrongs to be righted; — these stir not his 
blood one pulse beat. No Christian Marseil- 
laise ever uses his lips a*s organ pipes. 
Prophecy never scorches his heart with 
thunder. His words are never horsed to 
chariots of war. He is calm, passionless as 
the Sphinx, with a civilization dying in its 
shadow. Dante knocked at the gates of the 
under world, but the Unitarian cares noth- 
ing for the future. He denies there is a fu- 
ture of possible suffering. The Jewish 
prophet feathered his wings with lightnings, 
and listened with his ear against the sky, 
but the Unitarian, — calm, gentle, unemo- 
tional, almost impersonal, — keeps his eye 


24 


Prelude. 


upon the earth. Here is a man uninfluenced 
by the sovereign witchcraft of heroism. A 
man unwhipped by the sneers of skepticism. 
A man unstirred by the indignities heaped 
upon his times. Disinherited by ortho- 
doxy, possessing neither the Mohammedan 
ambition to destroy, nor the reformer’s in- 
stinct to upbuild, this man wanders through 
his fatherland, playing upon his ethical lute, 
“ All is well.” How is Humanity to know 
“ All is well ”? He says so ! 

Challenge him to describe his mission. 
There is nothing of the supernatural in it. 
You will be amazed at its earthy character. 

Earthy? It seems like plucking moss 
from graves to analyze it. Here it is in a 
sentence : To make the imperialism of Evan- 
gelical Christianity to cease, to mould fu- 
ture ages in the sepulchre of the past, to give 
America a religious golden age, emotionless 
as the repose of the desert. This is the 
teaching which, unfading as marble, has dic- 
tated the policy of Unitarianism for gener- 
ations. 

What is the effect of this creed upon the 
Unitarian sect? It is a world with the 
shadow of things, but not their substance. 

It has church buildings, but not church- 


Prelude. 


25 


men. It has scholars, but not theologians. 
It has poets, but no reformers. Unitarian - 
ism accepts Confucius of China as a moral 
teacher with the rank of an Hebrew prophet 
It welcomes Buddhism from India and gives 
Buddha mastership equal with Christ. Its 
theological wall shuts out the supernatural 
in religion, and shuts human reason in. 
The result is paralysis. Unitarianism is 
like the rocking of a cradle, — there is move- 
ment, but no progress. 

Shall we judge the system by its fruits? 
What surer way than to measure the Uni- 
tarian priest himself? Concede all he can 
ask. What are the counter facts? The 
damnation of intellectual pride builds a 
flaming wall between himself and human- 
ity. Through prolonged self-discipline he is 
able like the Phoenix to unfurl new wings 
out of the fiery ashes of misfortune, but the 
drunkards, the harlots, the criminals, the 
self-abandoned can not. Do you point to 
his vows? They do not mean worship. Do 
you speak of his ethical theory of self-sac- 
rifice? As well try to coin the gold of a 
butterfly’s wing as to reduce that theory to 
active benevolence. What ! measure an Uni- 
tarian with a modern Cranmer, or Gari- 


26 


Prelude. 


baldi? When did he ever kindle the skies 
with the prophetic arch of a great reforma- 
tion? We have poets that inspire to godli- 
ness. What hymn of theirs deserves that 
eulogy? Their speculations concerning God 
quicken thought, but do they inspire rever- 
ence? Does not their literature co-rival the 
noblest of our times? True, and to them it 
is more sacred than the Bible. But has one 
page ever affected the destinies of other de- 
nominations than their own? Reduced to 
its simplest form, what is their gospel? 
That sin is ignorance; that meditation will 
quell the riot of the passions; that ruler- 
ship, reform, are seated in the will, the rea- 
son ; that peace cannot reign until the senses 
are yoked through self-discipline; that a 
serene mind here and now outranks the 
problems of the future. 

To the Unitarian, Christianity is a phil- 
osophy and not a religion; therefore, Uni- 
tarianism is a moral theory. It offers self- 
discipline independent of the help of God? 
It does not make man kinsman to the skies, 
because it destroys man’s worshipping in- 
stincts. It makes men Unitarians, but not 
sons of God. But that is not all. Never did 
a heathen people under its spell achieve con- 


Prelude. 


27 


federate rights among the nations of the 
world, as Japan has done under the min- 
istry of Evangelical Christianity. Great 
wrongs, like fire, warp the iron and marble 
columns of our political institutions, but 
not from them do we hear the voice of pro- 
test, rebuke or warning. The most ordinary 
life is carved more wondrously than 
Achilles’ shield, but when did a Unitarian 
ever plead the cause of the sweat-shop 
workers? No; his highest ambition is to 
pause in life, his hands folded in resigna- 
tion; through culturing processes he con- 
quers the senses and attains “ Nirvana,” — 
perfect repose. But beyond him, is a 
shadow. In that shadow are the millions. 
That shadow is sin. Penitence avails noth- 
ing. Though a man swathe his arm with 
fire, make his dwelling-place amid thorns 
and scorpions, roll his garments in blood, 
and die self-strangled with curses of despair, 
there is no hope in Unitarianism. Even for 
angels charged with folly, sin hath no rem- 
edy in their philosophy. Repentance, Re- 
generation, Atonement are not graven in 
their scriptures. And this, because Unitar- 
ianism is like Buddhism, essentially Panthe- 
istic. That is the fatal flaw of that system. 


28 


Prelude. 


That is why, though still wearing the bor- 
rowed plumage of Christianity, it kneels in 
Boston now, as powerless to quell the vices 
of that city, as thistledown to unhorse the 
evil forces of a storm. 

Where are its Evangelists? When did it 
ever duplicate the day of Pentecost? Where 
in the ranks of the Salvation Army do you 
find Unitarians? What Unitarian is secre- 
tary of a Young Men’s Christian Associa- 
tion? How much is contributed by them for 
the support of Crittenden Homes for the re- 
demption of fallen women? Where is the 
location of its Bible Society? Has it ever 
nurtured a Fulton Street prayer-meeting? 
Does it minister to those in prison? Do 
Unitarian ministers preach in almshouses? 
Has Unitarian money ever furnished places 
where beggars can get food and drink and 
shelter in winter? How many newsboys’ 
homes has it erected? What reform has it 
ever inaugurated that lifted its sword 
against vice, crime, drink or any wickedness 
of the great cities? Where are its mission- 
aries among the Indians? What is it doing 
to-day as a denomination to solve the prob- 
lems of the negro race by schools or 
churches? When did it tender a college 


Prelude. 


29 


gift to the mountain whites of the South- 
land? Where are its societies of women 
who devote themselves to the protection of 
girls landing upon American soil from 
European steamships? What is the name 
of its society whose agents find homes for 
orphan babes and children? Where are its 
temples in the slum district of any great 
metropolis? 

There is a story that during the Dark 
Ages, when the Crusaders were about to 
sweep across the Alps to rescue the Holy 
Sepulchre, a man was being consecrated for 
knighthood by a priest. It was midnight. 
The great cathedral was wrapped in un- 
earthly gloom, broken only by the dim 
light of some candles. Within a few feet 
was an ancient tomb. Suddenly the priest 
and the kneeling novitiate were thrilled 
with terror by a sound within the stone 
vault. They listened. There was no mis- 
take. A faint knocking was heard from 
within the vault, where a man had been 
buried centuries ago. The knight seemed 
powerless to move. The priest walked 
bravely to the tomb, and by almost super- 
natural strength lifted the lid, and flung the 
light of his candle into the black depths. A 


30 


Prelude. 


human skull was rolling round as if alive. 
The heroic priest reached in his hand and 
picked up the hideous thing. To his horror 
there rolled from the skull a serpent. Hiss- 
ing and writhing it fell to the floor. 

Translate that story into the terms of this 
century-old controversy. That skull be- 
longed to Arius; that serpent is Unitarian- 
ism! 

In denying the deity of Christ, Unitarian- 
ism renders judgment that He was im- 
mortal and divine only as all men are im- 
mortal and divine. Push this proposition to 
its logical conclusion, and this judgment 
makes of “ Moses and the Prophets ” the rav- 
ings of delirium; it declares every Apostle 
either hoodwinked through ignorance, or 
self-deceived, and with lying lips deceiving 
others ; it makes Paul go in chains to Rome, 
self-damned with a delusion; it makes, of 
the martyrs of the centuries, each to die as 
the fool dieth. This judgment arraigns the 
scholarship of Christendom as the mouthing 
of an idiot dream, and brands the Christian 
piety of two hemispheres as blasphemous 
idolatry. 

Unitarianism, with its heart cold as the 
ashes of Arius, its ancestor; with an intel- 


Prelude. 


31 


lectual insolence and bravado worthy of 
Julian the Apostate, its elder brother; upon 
the Sabbath day, garbed in the stolen robes 
of Christian discipleship, utters the Judas 
cry, “ Hail, Master ! ” then, in every contro- 
versy with Evangelical Christianity, for a 
few pieces of silver, called “ Freedom of 
Thought,” it gives the Master the kiss of 
treason. 

Unitarianism, with its granite-hewn imi- 
tations of churches, and these desolate as a 
cemetery, save at the funeral of one of its 
members ; in whose pulpits the Bible is read 
with the same reverence as is accorded the 
essays of Marcus Aurelius, that royal 
butcher, his hands wet with the blood of the 
Saints; Unitarianism, whose copper-fingered 
gifts to benevolences in this country consti- 
tute a scornful parody upon Christian phil- 
anthropy, and whose miserly contributions 
to missions are an insult to Asia ; — this sect, 
which boasts no university worthy a schol- 
ar’s cloak, save Harvard, the child of Con- 
gregationalism, pirated generations ago, 
during the delirium of its Mother ; — 
this mockery of Protestantism, whose self- 
proclaimed priests bend their knees to noth- 
ing, save to a god mirrored each in his own 


32 


Prelude . 


intellectual image; whose most intense and 
aggressive zeal is shown in sending giftbooks 
to poison the minds of the youthful prophets 
in our Christian seminaries; — this denomi- 
nation, calling itself “ Christian,” which 
turns its mask-like face upon the sinful mul- 
titudes, bloodless and void of sympathy as 
the heart of Homan Stoicism; which makes 
the Evangelist the object of its derision, and 
a Revival the subject of its mirth; which 
affirms that a creedless platform is the only 
foundation for a creed; which offers the 
world negations for theology, and worm- 
eaten platitudes as texts for sermons ; — this 
intellectual monstrosity, still-born when the 
night of the Dark Ages had flung its first 
shadows upon Europe, but which has the 
actions of a human being only because of the 
galvanizing influence of Christianity ; — Uni- 
tarianism, standing here, and now, in the 
Twentieth Century, its hand clasping the 
leprous hand of Skepticism, turns to Chris- 
tendom, prostrate in worship before the 
Triune God, the Father, Son, and Holy 
Ghost, and says, as Festus, drunken with 
impudence, said to Paul, “ Thou art mad! ” 


FOREWORD. 


Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, — regard- 
less of who wrote the Gospels or when 
they were written, — our knowledge is de- 
rived from Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. 

Skepticism affirms that He was simply a 
great man, and denies His divinity. 

Unitarianism affirms, that He was divine, 
as all men are divine, greater only in de- 
gree; and denies His deity. 

It is not proposed here to discuss the sub- 
tle distinction between Skepticism and Uni- 
tarianism; the purpose of this book is to 
prove that both affirmations are absolutely 
false ! 


From the window of my home, I once saw 
the last act in the tragedy of a storm. 
Above the fields, the broken fences, the torn 
trees and flooded streams, stretched the mag- 
nificent fury of that tempest; but like the 
tragedy of Hamlet, when all grows serene 
and peaceful after the hero dies, so the 


34 


Foreword. 


winds seemed to cling half fainting to bush 
and flower until the last notes of the thun- 
der song were trumpeted back from the 
hills beyond the river far away. The clouds 
folded and re-folded upon the western sky, 
their angry lips fretted with lightnings 
which had lost their beautiful wrath. 
Then, suddenly, unseen fingers reached 
from the background, the storm cloud was 
torn in the centre, lifted, and a blazing arch 
appeared; thence from mysterious depths 
the sun streamed forth. 

In history, that storm cloud was Heathen- 
ism, that beautiful arch, Judaism, and the 
glory streaming through to the present 
time, The Christian Religion. 

Heathenism was humanity upon its face 
in despair. Judaism was humanity upon 
its knees, hoping, praying and prophesying. 
In Christ, for the first time in history, hu- 
manity stood upon its feet. 


CHAPTER I. 


The Preparation for Christ Through 
Judaism. 

At the close of a sermon on “ Miracles,” 
in a European church, a king said to the 
preacher, “ Chaplain, show me a modern 
miracle.” 

The Chaplain answered, “ The Jews, your 
Majesty.” 

Imagine yourselves in existence about 
three thousand years ago. 

Whole continents are unknown. Civili- 
zation seems as far away as summer when 
prophesied in a bird’s song from a bank of 
snow. In India self-tortured priests droop 
their knees to the unknown God. The 
Chinese sage is offering the first translation 
of the sun’s eclipse. Egypt has learned to 
robe the dead in perfumed vestments to 
mock decay. Solomon is building the first 
great temple in Jerusalem. How beautiful 
it is, leaning against the twilight! A cara- 
van is leaving Damascus gate. In one sad- 
dle is gold coin, destined to usurp the place 
of ivory as money. In another saddle is a 


36 The Preparation for Christ through Judaism. 

copy of the alphabet newly created from 
hieroglyphics. Twelve centuries later a 
Roman tyrant will add three letters more. 
As you pass into Thebes mark the wooden 
statues of her priests! Sculpture is about 
to put on coronation robes among the fine 
arts. Agriculture is the eldest born of the 
sciences, save one, War. At this very hour 
Sardanapalus is rolling sword-wheeled 
chariots into doomed Babylon. The blare 
of the battle trumpets is frightful. Under 
their bloody axes Western Asia kneels to 
Assyrian rule. We dare not visit Sparta; 
it has no laws and is savage as a den of 
wolves. Nor the ocean, for it is a chartless 
mystery. The seas must wait for Colum- 
bus. The sky craped in night like a Flor- 
entine Nun turns its starry eyes upon the 
unfinished walls of Carthage. That city is 
destined to be a thorn in the foot of Roman 
progress some day. The hour is weird, un- 
utterable in loneliness. Abraham has been 
dead a thousand years and Virgil is not 
ordained to sing until nine hundred more. 
Our Saxon ancestors have their skins tat- 
tooed, are drinking wine from skulls, and 
are as gentle as starving lions smelling 
blood. That prophet in the desert brood- 


The Preparation for Christ through Judaism. 37 

in g a whirlwind into a curse is Elijah. 
Yonder poet wandering through the broken 
palaces of Troy is, — Homer. The eagle of 
civilization is girded with the night owl’s 
drooping wing, a slow fitful flight through 
the darkness. The only records of the past 
are painted upon obelisks. The only fore- 
gleam of an immortal life is the Egyptian 
Book of the Dead. The slave’s child is 
whelped in a dungeon. Men are yoked with 
cattle. Women are the spoils of the sol- 
diers. Here and there a throne’s black 
shadow crosses the world. A tiger’s scowl 
upon a tyrant’s face is all that is known of 
government. 

In this hour, when America was un- 
known, when Europe was not mapped upon 
the scroll of nations, when the Mediter- 
ranean sea was dreaming when it would be 
marble-walled with cities, — already the 
Jewish race was walking the dusty streets 
of earth, with head erect and eyes blazing 
with prophecies. 

The origin of the Hebrew people is buried 
in mystery. Scholarship has sifted the dust 
of vanished races, and has found no clue, 
beyond the simple record that these were, 
“ The children of Abraham.” In Abraham 


38 The Preparation for Christ through Judaism. 

the genius of the race is summarized. He 
is called “ The Friend of God.” Centuries 
have added nothing to that God idea. The 
God of Abraham is now the God of modern 
Christianity. A rainbow of prophecy 
reaches from Mount Moriah to Calvary, 
“ In Abraham all the nations of the world 
shall be blest.” 

In Jacob we get a fresh starting point. 
His wrestling with the angel was a pro- 
phecy of Israel’s future struggles between 
a moral destiny and an earthly civilization. 
Before Jacob dies his name is changed to 
“ Israel, Prince of God ! ” 

Jacob’s last days were spent in Egypt. 
It was a wonderful change for the old man. 
For nearly an hundred years, he had lived 
a rude shepherd, a hermit, a wanderer, 
sometimes with a stone for a pillow, some- 
times without bread. Now he is the guest 
of the most powerful king in the world. 
Perhaps Joseph, his son, has shown him the 
tombs in the pyramids where kings lay 
buried in coffins hewn from gold. He has 
gazed upon the Sphinx, which, human- 
faced and lion-footed, incarnated Egypt’s 
dread majesty. There he stands gazing 
curiously at the Colossi, their hands upon 


The Preparation for Christ through Judaism. 39 

their knees, the symbol of Egyptian repose. 
He has stood within the temples whose 
granite columns overwhelm us even unto 
this day. 

One day he is invited to visit the king. 
Leaning upon the arm of his son Joseph he 
enters the imperial presence, and lifts his 
aged hands in blessing. You can almost 
hear the king say, “ How old art thou? ” 
What are the feelings of that Jew at this 
moment? There is a prophecy smoulder- 
ing in his heart. But can he not see that 
this prophecy is a delusion? Is not Egypt 
supreme? Can he not foretell that here his 
people are doomed to become bondsmen, 
that Egypt’s throne shall abide forever and 
his people perish? 

Jacob is dying now. His sons are kneel- 
ing at his side. He has blest them all save 
one. He calls that one: “ Judah, thou art 
the Lion’s whelp ; thy father’s children shall 
bow before thee. The sceptre shall not de- 
part from thee until Shiloh come. Then, 
unto him shall the gathering of the people 
be.” 

Ask the modern physician; he will say, 
“ This man doth rave, his lips are fever- 
kissed with delirium.” 


40 The Preparation for Christ through Judaism. 

In a few days yonder goes a little funeral 
procession. Jacob is being carried to his 
grave. The years pass by and the king dies. 
Then the centuries begin to roll around and 
Egypt is stretched a skeleton upon the 
banks of the Nile. Other centuries roll by 
and the splendid Oriental empires have van- 
ished into memories. Suddenly in the sky, 
a glory breaks. That mysterious utterance 
from Jacob’s dying lips bursts forth into 
immortal music. It is the singing of the 
angels over the hills of Bethlehem. That 
man’s dying whisper and that song, after 
many centuries, are linked — aye, forever! 

A new chapter in Israel’s history is 
opened, when we see that people enslaved, 
making bricks without straw in Egypt, 
scourged by the tyranny of Pharaoh. 

Pharaoh! Who could justly describe 
that throne-bred monster whose baby lips 
had nursed the tiger’s milk of cruelty? 
Imagine one with a face seared with the 
lethargy of winter, whose coronet should 
have been a living serpent coiled around his 
brow, eyes blistered with prejudice, writing 
his princely titles to a throne with a pen 
of swords, feathering himself with the 
stolen dignities of conquered races, pouring 


The Preparation for Christ through Judaism. 41 

into the wine-cup of his ambitions huge 
states, a king, whose aim culminated in 
the frightful ambition to use his army as a 
funeral wreath, the costly toils of Egypt for 
a pyramid tomb, — imagine this, and you 
have Pharaoh of the oppression. 

Nevertheless, the rise of the common peo- 
ple, and the genesis of our modern liberties, 
date back to that hour. It was a movement 
intelligently begun. It was not a riot upon 
the streets. It was a revolution inspired by 
patriotism. Suddenly a Jew confronts the 
throne and cries, “ Let my people go.” 
Pharaoh was the incarnation of Oriental 
tyranny; yet see how that throne of his 
was blackened, earthquaked, and shriveled 
up, because a few Jews blew indignant 
breaths against it, “ Proclaim liberty 
throughout the land unto all the inhabi- 
tants thereof.” That cry upon the lips of 
Moses gave birth to the American republic. 

A question ! Why did God elect the Jew 
an embassador to carry forward His holy 
^purposes? Answer this question: Why 
were the Greeks called to teach the world 
the arts, and the Romans to teach the world 
statesmanship? Answer this question: 
Why is that girl burning at the stake, Joan 


42 The Preparation for Christ through Judaism. 

of Arc? Why is that man upon the scaf- 
fold, Savonarola? Why is that man in the 
dungeon, Archbishop Cranmer? What is 
the gain, when John the Baptist is be- 
headed, and that intellectual prodigy, Ste- 
phen, in mid-career, his lips volcanic, sud- 
denly is smitten into silence? Let the man 
who can interpret the philosophy of the 
skies read for us. Why God does things 
we do not know. His purpose is, to conse- 
crate a people for a world ministry. He 
takes mortal flesh and blood and compounds 
it with iron and granite. The result is the 
Jewish race. Iron and granite? Yes! It 
is the one unbreakable race of history. 
Other races have amalgamated and van- 
ished. Races have intermarried and lost 
wars with surrounding peoples, and have 
overswept by revolutions, migrations, and 
wars with surrounding peoples, and have 
died. The survival of the Jewish race after 
passing through every tragical crisis, 
through persecutions and martyrdoms un- 
paralleled in history, — this race which liter- 
ally has marched through the centuries in 
chains, this race which scarcely ever 
breathed, except the air of a dungeon, this 
race that w T as for ages the living footstool 


The Preparation for Christ through Judaism. 43 

of Oriental kings, — if no record of the su- 
pernatural were presented to skepticism ex- 
cept the preservation of that race, the skep- 
tic’s dilemma would be, either to grant that 
here was a miracle, or affirm that history is 
a spider web of malignant energies, and in 
yonder skies justice is dead and the throne 
of God is in ashes. 

Let Draper and Buckle, these proud 
voices of materialistic philosophy, prove to 
you that climate moulds the personality of 
a race. They offer in evidence the Greeks, 
the Germanic peoples, the Hindus. It is a 
mathematical certitude, according to these 
scholars, that the mountains, the rivers, the 
oceans, the forests, like gigantic hands, 
fashion human clay into racial individual- 
ity. It is child’s play for an historian to 
demonstrate also, that a tribe or race is 
warped by contact with a new civilization. 
For example, take the Negroes and Indians; 
note how they have been rebronzed by the 
institutions of this country. 

Or stand yonder in New York: Watch 
the hordes from Europe, from every tribe 
and nation, flung into the crucible of our 
civilization; there they are melted; their 
racial attributes are burned out; even their 


44 The Preparation for Christ through Judaism. 

lips are imprinted with new speech; the 
customs and habits of centuries with their 
rags are flung aside, and in a few years, a 
generation or two, these strangers, these 
aliens, are transformed into citizens of the 
republic and accept the heroic soldiership 
of American ideals. 

But the Jew, a citizen of all climates, 
of all civilizations, of all centuries, whether 
in Asia, or under the black mask of Africa, 
or in this new world of ours, a son of Jacob 
in Washington City, or the son of Jacob 
who meets you in Arab garb under the 
shadow of the Sphinx, they are brethren, in 
blood, civilization, and religion. 

Here, also, is the mystery and tragedy of 
history. The prejudice that whispers in 
the heart of an ignorant Gentile is voiced 
in open enmity, outrageous tyranny and 
unutterable martyrdoms everywhere in the 
past. It would seem, if God ruled, that He 
should a century ago have damned Russia 
for her infamous age-long persecution of the 
Jews, and for the same reason should have 
flung the Turkish Empire into hell. 

If we could only call from their tombs 
those Oriental monsters called monarchies, 
they would upon the witness stand, before 


The Preparation for Christ through Judaism. 45 

the tribunal of history, with lips gangrened 
with hellish cruelty, tell how each in turn 
did try to slay the Jewish race. What is 
the cause of this modern and this ancient 
antagonism? We do not know. With us 
it passes with a frown, but in the Orient, — 
smite upon their tombs, and call them 
forth! There is the record of their crimes 
— read! Let Egypt come, her hands laden 
with bricks that the Jews made without 
straw under the lash of her taskmasters! 
Let Assyria come and show us her swords 
wet with Jewish blood! Let Persia and 
Babylon stand forth, and clanking the 
chains they forged for Jacob’s sons, tell us 
how in exile, in prison, and in bondage they 
tried to crush, to murder, that people, and — 
failed! Failed? Aye! They grappled as 
with an apparition. Their swords were 
broken as by an angel hand. Their char- 
iots of war seemed to buffet with a whirl- 
wind, and one by one these empires crept 
into their tombs, their eyes, like serpents, 
hissing undying hate, — and Israel , Israel, 
walked across their graves in victory ! 

A new chapter is now before us. 

Moses formulates a ceremonial system 
which expresses faith in God, sacrifice for 


46 The Preparation for Christ through Judaism. 

sin, an atonement and prayer for reconcilia- 
tion. The moral elements of that cere- 
monial system flamed in the background of 
Christ’s crucifixion. 

Also, the Jewish priesthood is created. 
First, a warrior caste; then, as the repre- 
sentatives of the moral ideals of Israel. 
That priesthood seemed indestructible. It 
survived the Judges, guarded the thrones 
of David and Solomon, beheld the building 
of the Monarchies on the Euphrates, trod 
the ruins of the Babylonian, Assyrian and 
Greek empires, created chapters of history 
during the four hundred years between 
Malachi and John the Baptist, confronted 
Christ, defended the walls of Jerusalem 
when they were besieged by Titus, wit- 
nessed the downfall of Roman imperialism, 
and gazed into the Northland until it un- 
furled the national flags of modern Europe. 

What is it that makes this man Moses, 
born under the shadow of the Pyramids, 
more gigantic than the Pyramids? It is 
what is called the Mosaic constitution ! 
With this constitution he separates Israel 
from among world races, kindles it with a 
heaven-inspired morality, and projects that 
race into the sky of history, — and that for 


The Preparation for Christ through Judaism. 47 

one purpose, to morning-star the universal 
reign of God on earth. Hence this consti- 
tution. 

It is a compact between God and a na- 
tion, a theocracy, the throne occupied by 
Jehovah and bowed before it the Jewish 
people as subjects. The people were to oc- 
cupy the land and prosper, not because of 
an overshadowing wing of swords, but ab- 
solute obedience to God. Moses protects this 
monotheism, the reverence of one God, with 
ramparts of law and ceremonials. To wor- 
ship the gods of other nations was treason. 
Sacrifices, national and individual, were in- 
stituted. The altar, like the flaming circle 
of noon, poured its radiance of love, thanks- 
giving, and atonement upon the people. 
The Sabbath was ordained to make the hu- 
man will vibrant to the touch of morality. 
The caste system which dammed up the cur- 
rents of social life was broken down. 
Slavery was so relieved of its evils that to 
be a slave in a Jewish family was better 
than to be a free man in Egypt. The de- 
struction of babes was reduced to a crime. 
The purity of the Jewish maid and wife, the 
costliest gems in the tiara of national life, 
was defenced by punishments terrible to 


48 The Preparation for Christ through J udaism. 

contemplate. Polygamy, which made the 
shores of other nations foul and muddy, was 
slowly submerged in the crystal tides of so- 
cial morality. Divorce was regulated. 
Life was esteemed so sacred that “ Refuge 
Cities ” were built for the accidental mur- 
derer. 

This is Moses, Israel’s first prophet, her 
first historian, her first poet, her first law 
giver. He was an Agitator, a Revolution- 
ist, a Reformer, and a Liberator. He was 
the first to give mankind the supreme sense 
of duties, rights, and responsibilities, and 
the first statesman in the world to create a 
national soul. He lifted the earth out of 
its orbit and placed civilization upon moral 
axes. He taught human brotherhood, he 
sanctified law, he made marriage holy as a 
sacrament, he enthroned womanhood, he 
stripped the temples of their idols, brought 
God out from the mysterious depths of 
Pantheism, and placed in His hand the 
scepter of universal sovereignty. 

Did you ever see Angelo’s sculptured 
marble, his dream of Moses? It is the form 
of a giant, the brow massive as a tidal wave, 
the sockets of the eyes like the mouths of 
volcanoes, while upon the lips seem to rest 


The Preparation for Christ through Judaism. 49 

the thunders of Sinai. Angelo has sculp- 
tured this man seated in a chair, his face 
turned toward the future. Unlike the 
Egyptian Sphinx, which looks forever with 
scornful face upon the generations which 
live and die in its presence, the chair of 
Moses is like a throne of judgment, himself 
an archangel of earth’s destiny, holding in 
his arms the tabled laws, — laws destined to 
be the criteria of civilizations, the inspira- 
tional music of the world’s morality, the 
foundations of Christ’s kingdom, and the 
prophecy of world-wide redemption. 

Listen to his command, “ Let the children 
of Israel go forward ! ” “ Forw ard ! ” This 
the deathless cry of progress. Civilization 
henceforth is to be conditioned upon per- 
petual motion. Lacking this, Egypt per- 
ished. Upon Nebo yonder stands the great 
statesman jurist. He sees the people strik- 
ing their tents. There is the Promised 
Land, but he cannot enter. We leave him 
there, to die, and to die alone, — the most 
majestic manhood that ever braved the 
wrath of Egypt’s thrones. 

The Book of Judges portrays the gulf of 
immorality into which Israel plunged. 
“ There w as no king in Israel, and every 


50 The Preparation for Christ through Judaism. 

man did that which was right in his own 
eyes.” What banner now floats in that 
sky? The red flag of anarchy, which hath 
no stars. The times grew black as vows 
of treason. What preserved Israel during 
this night of lawlessness? One faith, one 
code of laws, and one sanctuary. It was 
Samuel who washed the heart of Israel with 
the snow of pure ideals. He hath the coun- 
tenance of a priest. He is also the fore- 
runner of the future prophets. As a seer 
and statesman he resembled Moses. He re- 
established the state upon religion, and thus 
saved it from the grave. 

Deborah, that magnificent impersonation 
of freedom, has chanted her grand epic. 
Samson and Gideon have changed from 
men to spectres. Then, as a sword and a 
shield of defense against the barbarians, the 
people demand a king, and the warrior 
Saul is diademed its first monarch. The 
sceptre descends to David, who drank the 
foam of battle like wine. In the midst of 
his wars David lays the foundations of Je- 
rusalem. O Jerusalem, what blessings, what 
curses, what virtues, what crimes, what 
tragedies have issued from thy gates! Art 
thou, great city of David, still an unfulfilled 


The Preparation for Christ through Judaism. 51 

prophecy? Will thy crown yet girdle the 
nations? Who can tell? 

But it is not David the king, but David 
the poet, who compels our reverence. 
David was more splendidly harped than 
Shakespeare. Shakespeare is the monarch 
of the brain, David of the heart. Shake- 
speare thrills, David inspires. Shakespeare 
is for the scholar’s study, David for the fire- 
side. Shakespeare needs translation, 
through staged splendors of voice and 
pomp of circumstance; David speaks the 
language of the universal emotions which 
need no interpretation. Shakespeare de- 
scribes the tragedies of men and of nations ; 
David visions the tragedy of the human 
soul. 

Hebrew poetry is as solitary as the race 
itself. It is picturesque as the night, yet 
thrilled with feeling as a human nerve ; pas- 
sionate as a conflagration and full of repose 
as a mountain; in strength, lion-like, yet a 
voice soft as woman’s. Contrasted with 
the world poets, the Hebrew bard stands 
alone. The scream of Horace amid imper- 
ial vices is frightful, but after all it is a 
Roman protest. Juvenal lifts in his talons 
the Caesars from their thrones, but that is 


52 The Preparation for Christ through Judaism. 

Latin cruelty. Homer poised yonder in the 
sky gazing down upon the carcasses of 
kings, belongs at last to a savage age. 
Though Dante walks through hell, he does 
not go beyond the regal vices of Italy. Even 
Shakespeare could not empty his thoughts 
of their English blood. 

But the Hebrew poet, — the satire of Hor- 
ace, the invective of Juvenal, the sublimity 
of Homer, the solemnity of Dante, the tragic 
verse of Shakespeare, — all these attributes 
belong to his genius. Search the Psalms of 
David ! What emotion but is expressed, 
what passion but is echoed, what mood but 
is sounded? The human mind upon the 
desert of skepticism; the joy hours that 
make the mountains luminous ; the dungeon 
of despair; the victory of faith; the mid- 
night wrestling with temptation; the ex- 
altation of religious devotion; the bridal 
chamber; the farewells of the dying; — for 
each experience in life a Psalm is tongued 
with sympathy. When the storm spirit 
puts the forest to its lips and blows a trum- 
pet blast of anger, have you not heard its 
echoes in the imprecatory Psalms? Verses 
are there adorned in coronation robes. 
Others are sheeted in horror like the dead. 


The Preparation for Christ through Judaism. 53 


What triumphant music they have fur- 
nished the flame-wreathed martyr. Re- 
member Cromwell stretching a Psalm into 
a war drum. Behold the verses eagle- 
feathered with the prophecies of a Messiah. 
Now and then you hear funeral anthems 
wailing in the distance. Here and there 
are magnificent recessionals, fitted for the 
cathedrals of all ages. 

Hebrew poetry is not merely sublime as 
literature, or as a thousand-piped organ of 
the emotions. The poems of the Old Testa- 
ment fling the questions of earth and time 
into the skies and the answers are writ- 
ten in as by a pen dipped in the volcanoes 
of the sun. 

Take the Book of Job. 

In the poetry of Job are stated the great- 
est problems and solutions that belong to 
the spirit life of man. 

That poem contains but one great char- 
acter, — it is Job himself. 

He sums up the human race within him- 
self and thinks! He voices the anguish of 
generations and weeps. He repeats the 
heart cries of the centuries. Men cannot 
understand him; so he talks to the desert. 
He pours out his complaint to the sea. He 


54 The Preparation for Christ through Judaism. 

argues with the whirlwind. He kneels 
there naked upon the sand, his lips fester- 
ing with disease, asking God questions. 
Job is humanity in antiquity, standing in 
the dark pleading for light. He is human- 
ity in despair. He passes from despair to 
skepticism and from skepticism to faith, 
and that is the history of the human race. 
How are his doubts solved? He makes 
friends with the Pleiades, and the divine 
forces that toil in the skies with intelli- 
gence, and learns that a knowledge of divine 
relationships is the great goal of all human 
effort and thinking. When Job rises from 
the desert in peace he represents humanity 
rising from the ignorance of the beast to a 
knowledge of God and of divine provi- 
dences. 

The Saxon Hamlet says, “ To be or not to 
be, that is the question.” 

Job, the Oriental Hamlet, earthquakes 
the cemeteries of the world with that stu- 
pendous question, “ If a man die, shall 
he live again? ” 

The Saxon Hamlet is tempted by suicide 
to solve the problems of the soul. The 
Oriental Hamlet confronts the same tempta- 
tion. You can hear the sneer of Job’s wife, 


The Preparation for Christ through Judaism. 55 

“ Curse God and die.” Listen to his an- 
swer, “ Though He slay me, yet will I trust 
him.” 

There he kneels, lip deep in the desert 
sand. The night mocks him, the whirlwind 
stifles him. Nevertheless he gazes stead- 
fastly into futurity. We do not know what 
he saw, but afar off in the centuries there 
was a cross tilted. At last he climbs to his 
feet, and there rolls from his lips the song 
of an archangel ; he says, “ I know that my 
Redeemer liveth.” That single sentence 
has done more to comfort the dying genera- 
tions since, than the gifts bestowed upon hu- 
manity by all the proud-voiced schools that 
belong to earth and time. 


CHAPTER II. 


PREPARATION FOR CHRIST THROUGH JUDAISM ; 

THE PROPHETS. 

It is yet centuries before Christ. Solo- 
mon’s temple has become the storm centre 
of an hundred battlefields. Samaria is 
building, and Jericho is rising from the 
grave. Then Ahab is crowned. This vile 
toad, squatted upon the throne of Israel, be- 
thought himself a king. Influenced by his 
heathen wife, Queen Jezebel, he stained the 
altars of Jehovah with bloody sacrifices to 
the sun god of the Phoenicians. Then there 
bursts upon the scene the first and mightiest 
prophet of all nations. It is Elijah! He 
is a whirlwind whelped by the desert. He 
is not a preacher; he is the national spirit, 
arraying itself single-handed against a 
world blasphemous with idolatry. He is 
an hero, a reformer, the great rebuker of 
crimes in high places ! He lived in the age 
that birthed Homer, and his anger is terri- 
ble as the wrath of Achilles. David the 
Hebrew, pleading for repentance; Homer 
the Greek! pleading for progress, and Eli- 


The Prophets. 


57 


jah confronting Ahab with his rebuke of 
thunder, — this was the threefold genius 
that shook the nations. 

Primarily, however, the Jewish prophet 
was the guardian of the Hebrew religion. 
It was a religion that welded Jew to Jew in 
loyalty, that gave the race solidarity un- 
bending as Sinai, that painted its person- 
ality, that fashioned the genius of its great 
men, that atmosphered its literature, that 
moulded eras of progress, that saved it from 
the wreck of Oriental empires, that snatched 
it as a brand from the burning amid Roman 
conquest, that influenced other civiliza- 
tions, but was unaffected by them, — a re- 
ligion, the battlements of a race during 
thousands of years in the past, and reincar- 
nated in Christianity, the divinity of the 
world through thousands of years in the 
future. 

For each crisis in the life of Israel a 
prophet stood panoplied for action. 
There came a time when locusts cursed the 
earth. Besides, an army with spears like 
teeth crouched in the desert. Worst of all, 
the Jewish priests were as corrupt as 
drunken slaves. What can save the nation? 
Nothing that man can do. That is JoePs 


58 The Preparation for Christ 

message. His prophecy is spiritual. Let 
the people rend their hearts and not their 
garments. It is done. Already the prophet 
foresees the vision of God’s spirit being 
poured upon all flesh. “ Multitudes, multi- 
tudes, stand in the valley of decision.” Joel 
is the flag of foreign missions folded into a 
man. 

After Joel the ocean speaks. It is Jonah. 
He stood so high above his age that he has 
lost the form of man. Scholarship points 
to him as a tradition, a shadow ! Yes, but 
a shadow volcanic with light! Behind the 
curtain of his speech great Nineveh shifted 
scenes of reveling for penitential tears. 
God used this man as a sword against race 
prejudice. He is the forerunner of Paul, 
an apostle to the Gentiles. 

Between Joel and Hosea, stands Amos, 
his eye tearless as destiny. The world 
needed a new orbit. The sceptre was frozen 
with tyranny. In Bethel, at the king’s 
summer palace, idols scorched and blistered 
the earth. Horrible social crimes trans- 
formed men into weeds and women into 
thorns. Behold then the prophet of retri- 
bution. The field has come to rebuke the 
city. Amos is the high executor of Judah’s 


through Judaism ; The Prophets. 59 

rights. No escorting army reinforces his 
impeachment of civilization. He summons 
the nations to judgment. He tears a cata- 
logue of thrones from the parchment of his- 
tory: Damascus for cruelty, Gaza for tor- 
turing captives, Tyre for voluptuousness, 
Edom for savage lust, Moab for scarlet vice, 
and Israel for using the temple of idolatry 
for a winding sheet around Jehovah’s 
altars. All are to be punished. It is a 
flaming panorama of God’s judicial majesty, 
which shows partiality neither to men nor 
nations. 

Then came a dangerous hour in history. 
Scorched already, Israel would not have 
tolerated a flame- tongued messenger. Was 
it not providential then that Hosea comes? 
He is the prophet of the emotions. His 
tears are like incense. The people wore 
the dangerous brow of mutiny, but he was 
irresistible. Had not his own wife sinned 
and unpalaced his joy; had he not re- 
wedded her to his heart? Was it not nat- 
ural, therefore, that from this, he should 
reason up to the infinite sweep of divine 
mercy? “ God is love!” That message 
cured the apostate nation. Once more, like 
a potted plant in winter, it turned its leaves 


60 The Preparation for Christ 

toward the sun and flowered forth right- 
eousness. 

Deceived into false security by Assyrian 
promises of peace, Jerusalem once more 
degenerated until her brain seethed with 
crimes. The king, the nobles, the priests 
needed a prophet rather than the people, 
and there he stands, as many-sided as Jeru- 
salem itself. He is a scholar, the historian 
of his age; a statesman, the rudder of the 
ship of state; a poet, worthy of rank with 
David; an aristocrat, dwelling in luxury; 
his tribunal lips are silvered with elo- 
quence; his dignity compels the mitred 
priests to bow in his presence; his con- 
science, voiced with Sinai’s thunders, rocks 
the throne with terror. It is Isaiah, the 
prophet of royalty, the prophet of the 
metropolis, the prophet of world kingdoms; 
among the prophets, the first evangelist. 
He addresses himself to the universe : 
“ Hear, O earth; give ear, O ye heavens.” 
The sins of man had infected nature; there- 
fore he smites with woes the cedars of Leb- 
anon, the oaks of Bashan, the high moun- 
tains. Jerusalem gloried in her title, “ The 
Holy City.” He smites the temples, the 
sabbaths, the new moons as idols. Into the 


through Judaism ; The Prophets. 61 

third gulf of woes he flings the cities them- 
selves. The earth, the cities, religions have 
been slain. Then came the vision of the 
Messiah who shall rebuild. His voice 
breaks into music. He says the Messiah’s 
name shall be called “ Wonderful.” There 
is a pause, and a loftier note falls to 
earth, “ Counsellor.” Then from the silence 
comes forth an appalling outburst, “ The 
Mighty God, the Everlasting Father.” Is 
he through? Not yet; he sees the end of 
battlefields, and cries, “ The Prince of 
Peace.” Then he retreats into his tomb 
with that tremendous, world-huge prophecy, 
“ The government shall be upon his shoul- 
ders.” 

We come now to a period of Israelitish 
captivity. Nahum, too, stands among the 
bondsmen. But never was an exile more 
loyal to the fatherland. “ O Judah,” he 
cries, “ keep thy solemn feasts, perform thy 
vows; emancipation is at the gates.” Only 
yesterday this prophet had walked amid the 
ruins of Thebes. To him those crumbling 
palaces were more infamous than the flow- 
ers rotting upon a harlot’s grave. From 
afar he sees the chariots of the Medes. They 
fill the air like wings. When they fight it 


62 


The Preparation for Christ 


is not a battle ; it is a pestilence. But he is 
not dismayed. He places a skeleton in his 
prophecy. That kingdom is ruined, because 
it has become a ditch of throne-kissing 
slaves. Then he uprolls the centuries and 
reveals the Messiah. “ Behold upon the 
mountains, the feet of him that bringeth 
good tidings.” That is the message of tri- 
umphant optimism. 

When reformation is needed, where 
should it begin? In the church itself. 
When the church has become a wolf, strip- 
ping the flesh from the nation’s bones, what 
kind of man is needed? A Luther! Habak- 
kuk and Luther are mysteriously like each 
other. Like Luther’s, what Habakkuk’s 
eye beheld, his bribeless tongue preached. 
Like Luther’s, Habakkuk’s mind overtopped 
the age as a mountain does the plain. Fi- 
nally it was Habakkuk who reached across 
the ages and gave to Paul, who from his 
tomb gave to Luther, that earthquake sen- 
tence, “ The just shall live by faith.” With 
that message Habakkuk resurrected Jeru- 
salem, — then Luther took it and resurrected 
Christendom from the tomb of the dark 
ages. 

If Habakkuk resembles Luther, Micah is 


through Judaism ; The Prophets. 63 

the prototype of Wendell Phillips. The 
times were similar. A hyena’s Snarl curled 
the lip of conservatism. The magistrates 
had degenerated. False prophets rooted 
beautiful intellects in foul bodies. Public 
virtues, like crumbling statues, lay in the 
dust. Then came the tribune of a new dis- 
pensation, Micah! The words melted from 
his lips in a fiery flood. Like Phillips he 
never mouthed the echoes of popular opin- 
ion. When the nations seemed most flour- 
ishing, then it was he chanted a mighty 
funeral dirge. To him, already these gor- 
geous capitals had vanished. Jerusalem, 
by her sins, had forfeited the right of being 
the Messiah’s throne. Whence then shall 
come the victor? “ From thee, O Bethle- 
hem — least of the thousands of Judah.” 
When the city fails, God shall consecrate 
the village for the world’s deliverance. 

The scene shifts, and we find the nations 
in a forward movement. The sword-handed 
Scythians have stepped from the sea as far 
as the Pyramids. The Medes have encircled 
Nineveh with battering rams. Yet the 
conscience of Jerusalem basely croaked a 
message of peace when there was no peace. 
Zephaniah brands this as treason. He 


64 The Preparation for Christ 

points to the morality of Jerusalem black 
as the brow of a forest. He scourges the 
times with whips of fire. Because Jeru- 
salem has refused to share her treasures of 
truth, she shall sink into the sea of the na- 
tions; but her holy ideals shall globe the 
world with moral imperialism. 

After these voices you hear a man weep- 
ing. It is Jeremiah. But his weeping is 
not like that of a man. It resembles more 
the sobbing of an archangel over a lost 
world. He pushes back the gray hairs 
which overhang his brow like an avalanche. 
He reviews the history of the nations. Then 
he marches his sentinel eyes around Jeru- 
salem. He sees the Chaldeans like locusts 
rising from the desert. Jerusalem, that 
eagle, is hatching the serpent eggs of idol- 
atry. The people shall be slain. Already 
the Egyptians are hastening to the car- 
casses like vultures. The vision fills him 
with horror. He yokes his neck a dumb 
prophecy. He calls himself “ The Man of 
Sorrows.” But his tears seem to have un- 
charged God’s judgment of their lightnings. 
Suddenly from his prison cell of captivity 
he flings a beautiful promise. Jerusalem 
shall yet arise from captivity and become 


through Judaism ; The Prophets. 65 

the spiritual embassador of the nations. 
Marvelous old man! There he crouches in 
his tomb, waiting patiently until the pro- 
cesses of the ages shall vindicate his 
prophecy. 

Daniel, a Babylonian scholar, is also the 
hero prophet. When did the anger of kings 
ever quell that trumpet of dread tidings? 
Amid days drunk with idolatry did he not 
stand like a human conscience, stripped of 
mortal clay On every side vices uncoiled, 
crested with splendor, like Egypt’s basil- 
isks. The people were only feathers in the 
wings of monarchs. Since he was educated 
in Chaldean literature, empires are por- 
trayed as monsters. That is why his visions 
seem impossible of translation. Earth’s 
kingdoms are webs, and in each he sees a 
human spider wearing a crown of gold. 
They pollute the ceilings of heaven. He 
tears them down. Behold what takes their 
place! A throne of flame, upon which an 
angel form is seated, having human person- 
ality. Daniel is the first to prophesy that 
the Messiah would be an interblending of 
heavenly and earthly natures. Before this 
“ Ancient of Days ” he sees adoring nations 
prostrate in worship and thanksgiving. 


66 


The Preparation for Christ 


What prophet resembles Hamlet in tragic 
action? Ezekiel! Imagine a preacher using 
coffins for texts. Imagine a seer having his 
hair shorn as the type of threatened deso- 
lation. Imagine a reformer eating filth to 
describe the horrors of slavery. Imagine a 
prophet whose tears turn to blood as he lis- 
tens to the rumbling Tvheels of on-coming 
judgment. This quadruple man was Eze- 
kiel. His eyes faint with terror as he 
glances down upon Israel’s threatened de- 
struction. Therefore, he climbs the hill- 
tops of futurity. The visions there unseal 
his lips with prophecies. Judah is in bonds, 
but not the spirit of God. He beholds that 
spirit charioteered upon the four winds. 
It breathes upon the valley filled with the 
slain, and they live. What more? He 
gazes upon the cherubim, the everlasting 
gospels, the glory-girdled throne of salva- 
tion. Then his vision rends future ages, 
and he tells of the holy waters flowing from 
the temple, a brook, a river, a sea, measure- 
less, boundless, the world-sweeping victories 
of Christ’s kingdom. 

Obadiah is a revolutionist. Why does he 
set on fire the rich blood of civilization? 
Because the Idumeans had not only trodden 


through Judaism ; The Prophets. 67 

Jerusalem in conquest, but had left behind 
a bloody trail of crimes. He breathes the 
feverish breath of insurrection into the 
stagnant veins of Jacob’s sons, “ Let Israel 
arise and Edom shall fall, though she hath 
built her nest in the stars ! ” Look at the 
hour of Obadiah’s protest and promise. 
The Chaldean soldiers like serpents are 
crawling over the walls of cities. Nebu- 
chadnezzar has already girdled Tyre with 
camp fires. This was the moment he elects 
to proclaim the triumph of Israel’s theoc- 
racy. It will take long for this mountain 
to forge slime into granite, but it will come 
to pass. This new liberty will render 
crowned kings miserable spectres. Peace 
will one day chord every battle-axe with 
harp strings. Obadiah is the soul of democ- 
racy, waiting for its body to become the 
evangel of state-building peoples. 

Haggai labors with Zephaniah in the 
resurrection of the temple. Without that 
temple Judah will be a skull, hideous to 
look upon. His speech, therefore, is full 
of warning, as a bell in foggy seas. His 
prophecy is buttressed with past experi- 
ences. Let Judah consecrate her gold and 
silver. Let the temple once more be per- 


68 The Preparation for Christ 

fumed with the prayers of multitudes. 
What then will happen? Israel shall re - 
occupy her place in the moral economy of 
the Orient and heathen nations will find 
her altars an everlasting blessing. 

The new age demands a new prophet. It 
is Zachariah. His fiery judgments are 
fretted with golden mercies. WTio can 
pierce the cloud that shrouds his face? 
What does he mean by kneeling amid Assy- 
rian triumphs as if they were ash-heaps 
from charnel - houses? Zachariah has 
watched the hand of God writing in the 
confederacy of human events. Above his 
head flies a roll winged with curses. He 
overwhelmed the Jews with indignation. 
God is no longer the God of Israel. What 
is He? He is the universal God of right- 
eousness and justice. He breaks as with a 
battle-axe the shell of Jewish exclusiveness, 
in order that its religion may become earth- 
wide and age-long. Then he tears the cloud 
from his face and stands upon his feet. He 
says, “ The day is coming when holiness 
unto the Lord shall be written upon the 
bells of the horses ! ” 

Many centuries have passed by, and be- 
cause the Messiah had not yet climbed the 


through Judaism ; The Prophets, 69 

hills in bannered victory, the enthusiasm of 
the ages had put on the garb of winter. 
Malachi seemed, therefore, like spring born 
out of due time, beating its wings and fol- 
iage against prison walls of snow. It is the 
last great message of prophecy, but what an 
outreach of vision ! First he says, “ God is 
our Father ; ” second, “ God will purge the 
sons of Jacob like gold and silver with fire.” 
Then he concentrates the visions of a thou- 
sand years into that terrific outburst, — 
“ The Sun of Righteousness shall arise with 
healing in his wings.” 

The Jewish prophet! 

Eight hundred years of revelation 
streamed through his brain. He was not 
an oracle, whispering to the tune of bribes. 
He was not a soothsayer building predic- 
tions from the entrails of beasts. He was a 
seer, a statesman, a reformer, an historian, 
the critic of the world. All problems of 
men and of empires he measured in the 
flashlights of eternity. Every calamity and 
epoch-making event must have a cause. He 
searches for it in God’s providences. The 
prophet’s creed is simple : God is in history ; 
He hath chosen Israel for His servant; 
such knowledge brings responsibility; 


70 The Preparation for Christ 

therefore moral indifference is a crime ! 
Sometimes the whirlwind of his country’s 
wrongs beats upon his heart and bursts it 
into flame. Sometimes he garbs himself in 
the nation’s needs as in a soldier’s uniform. 
Sometimes he is like the sky, greatest in 
the midnight hour of his country’s despair. 
But always he is like Abraham, “ The 
Friend of God ! ” 

After the Old Testament has passed 
through the furnace fires of criticism, the 
prophetic element still remains unscorched. 
The Old Testament is the book of the 
angels. Prophetic voices that whisper in 
the first pages of Genesis unroll into thun- 
der speech in the last pages of Malachi. 

Not only were there prophets in the Jew- 
ish race, but the element of prophecy mys- 
teriously relates itself to the people as a 
whole. 

The smallest events are prophetic: The 
flood and the ark; Abraham upon Mount 
Moriah; Jacob’s dream of a heavenly lad- 
der; the serpent lifted in the wilderness; 
the fasting of Moses; the ordination of 
priests ; the altar ; the victim ; the blood ; the 
ark borne about through the years; the 
statutes; the imagery of the temple; battle- 


through Judaism ; The Prophets . 71 

fields where Israel conquers or is defeated; 
sacred tools ; eras of bondage ; the crowning 
of kings ; the destruction of cities, — there is 
in the Old Testament a vast interblending 
of events and men so tragical in outline, in 
prophetic meaning, that we look and listen 
bewildered, amazed, overwhelmed with emo- 
tion. 

I one time stood upon the inside of a 
great organ. As the musician touched the 
keys, the blocks of wood, piled up in layers, 
rose and fell in indescribable confusion, 
while peal on peal of harsh, discordant 
thunder shook the building. But when 
I stood without, the harsh notes became 
melodious as shepherd’s flutes. The dis- 
cords were mellowed into harmonies, 
and what seemed to be an African storm 
was transmuted into a symphony so 
triumphant, as if cherubs were chanting 
through the aisles an oratorio. 

So with the Bible. 

The skeptical ear, untuned to the phil- 
osophy of history, will find the Old Testa- 
ment a discord, not a symphony. There, 
battle-chariots crash against overturned al- 
tars. Slave-chains at war with thrones. 
Poems like south winds suddenly breathe 


72 


The Preparation for Christ 


across mountains of materialism. Brutish- 
faced idols mock at temples where the ark 
is and the golden cherubim. 

But there is another view of the Old 
Testament. 

Look at it from the hilltops of Matthew’s 
Gospel. Then, how beautiful those aisles 
whose blood-stains here and there are sweet 
with memories of Israel’s joy. Those col- 
umns like obelisks do stand, their marble 
pages sculptured deep with prophecy and 
psalm. Whence that music, whose un- 
earthly notes, like spectre-smitten organ 
keys, do thrill with dread and grief and 
hope? Within yon shadow, vast and dim, 
is Sinai’s Mount, and on its crest the 
prophets kneel, their bodies wrapped in 
night, their faces touched with dawn. O Ye 
Immortal Ones, earth knew ye not till 
time’s unrolling judgment scroll did vindi- 
cate your words and tears that warned! 

There moves a priestly throng, you hear 
a deep-toned chant. Where yonder harp- 
string sounds, a poet weeps. That altar 
in its flame some covenanted hope doth cele- 
brate. That colossal moving shade is 
Israel in its weary march. While above, 


through Judaism ; The Prophets. 73 

around, the very air seems luminous and 
thrilled with angel presences and songs. 

Never does the prophet’s eye grow treach- 
erous with skepticism. The Jewish pro- 
phets did not hesitate to contradict the very 
processes of history. They foretold abso- 
lutely the calamities of Israel and of sur- 
rounding nations from Abraham to Christ, 
and horoscoped the personality of the Mes- 
siah, the nature of His kingdom, its earth- 
wide conquests, and the closing chapters of 
the world. He stood alone in a world filled 
with idols, and cried, “ Hear, O earth, 
there is but one God.” 

These prophets are men, but they seem to 
have wings. Instead of speech you hear 
mysterious cries that no man can compre- 
hend. When they see the peril of Israel’s 
downfall into materialism, they turn their 
faces like suns upon the ocean, and draw- 
ing up mists and clouds, they roll them 
across the sky of Israel’s future in judg- 
ment warnings. The prophet used his 
stake of martyrdom like a battle-axe and 
swung it against despotism. He plucked 
up the fire-brands kindling at his feet, and 
hurled them into the future. To scaffold 


74 


The Preparation for Christ 


one of those high thinkers was to lift his 
thought into the sky. To scatter his dust 
was to scatter his ideas. Humanity was a 
famished tiger. The prophet Hung himself 
into those angry jaws to satisfy humanity’s 
hunger for God, righteousness and redemp- 
tion. 

What immense personalities! Nothing 
could thwart their sublime purposes. They 
clasp hands across centuries, and keep step 
Avith the drums of God for man’s redemp- 
tion. If one falters another leaps forward 
and picks up the burden. They succeed 
each other like different swells of music, but 
there is only one symphony. A patriarch 
is followed by a law^-giver, the law-giver is 
succeeded by a dreamer, the dreamer by a 
poet, the poet by a king; then, in the foot- 
steps of the king a city flings its battle- 
ments in the air, and crouched at the city’s 
gates are lion-voiced prophets. But each of 
these prophets supplements some other, cor- 
rects, improves, enlarges, Avorking at dif- 
ferent angles upon a fabric concealed even 
from their eyes. But the temple w r as rising 
toward the sky. No sound of tool or noise 
of hammer, the foundations buried in the 
past, the w r alls gleaming in the ages; here 


through Judaism; The Prophets. 75 

a column is lifted, and there an arch is 
sprung, but always rising higher and 
higher, throwing its glories farther and 
farther, spreading its influence wider and 
wider, and under the touch of countless 
voices, under the touch of countless hands, 
there glows upon the vision of Israel the 
dream of a golden age! 

But that is not wonderful, — every nation 
has had that dream. But the Jewish pro- 
phet’s dream reversed all others. What, 
for example, was the golden age of the Ro- 
man Empire, sung by its poets and realized 
by its Caesars? A golden age was prophe- 
sied when a great city should rule the 
world; a time when glorious architecture 
should adorn the streets ; a time when sages 
should speak and poets sing; a time when 
men and women should be clad in costly rai- 
ment and revel in banquets. That time was 
realized. When Augustus Caesar sat upon 
the throne, a golden milestone was driven 
into the earth, — the golden age had come! 
What was the Jewish dream? Simply a 
time when, Every man , woman and child in 
the world should be clothed in righteous- 
ness! 

These prophets are universal men. Yes- 


76 


The Preparation for Christ 


terday they dictated the policy of the Jew- 
ish race. To-day they umpire the moral 
destinies of the world. They stride about 
the legislative halls of Washington city. 
They fold their wings in every capital of 
Europe. They walk the ramparts of civili- 
zation, doing sentinel duty. Every politi- 
cal institution of modern times bears the 
finger prints of their minds. They are the 
elder brothers of the Apostles. It was 
Moses and Elijah who communed with 
Christ on the Mount of Transfiguration. 
They are to-day more powerful for right- 
eousness, justice and liberty than the com- 
bined armies, navies and parliaments of 
earth. Thrones, like tombs, make shadows. 
The tombs of the prophets blaze with light. 

The skeptic confronts an historical 
dilemma that the sword of an Alexander 
cannot cut in angry caprice. The prophets 
and Christ belong together. To deny this 
is not argument. Submit the counter facts. 

Examine the chapters of American and 
European annals, and name one epoch in 
which there is any hint of a prophecy, even 
approximately terminating in a personality 
yet to be born. Compare four hundred 


through Judaism; The Prophets. 77 

years of American history and four hun- 
dred years recorded in the Old Testament, 
and no further demonstration is necessary. 
Whether the prophecies terminate in Jesus 
Christ is not imperatively insisted upon 
now, — the skeptic must concede, apparent- 
ly, that they do. But the doctrine of mathe- 
matical probabilities will not permit us to 
say that this is an accident. Centuries and 
centuries of history never culminate in a 
coincidence. That the prophecies of the 
Old Testament do culminate in Jesus Christ 
is the affirmation of twenty centuries of 
Christian scholarship. 

Account for this overpowering legion of 
men and historical events preceding and 
predicting the Messiah. The law of cause 
and effect is not in evidence. The prophets 
of the Old Testament were created by the 
vision of a coming Messiah. If this be true, 
we confront another miracle of history. 

It was the Messianic vision and nothing 
else that overwhelmed the Jewish prophet. 
First, he is described as the ideal man. 
Then to the amazement of the watchers he 
becomes fairer than the sons of men, the 
chief among ten thousand. For a moment 


78 


The Preparation for Christ 


He disappears. The clouds and darkness 
hide Him in their pavilion; then, the gates 
lift up their heads, the everlasting doors are 
opened, and He is seen vestured and en- 
throned, “ The king of glory ! ” The angels 
are given charge concerning Him; Mount 
Zion beholds His coming and is glad ; 
the nations advance to greet this Shiloh 
of redemption, and, interpret as you 
may those astounding words, the scholar- 
ship of the civilized world attests, that 
He who walked the mysterious depths of 
those prophecies, afterward, — clothed in 
flesh and blood, — trod the storm-swept 
waves of Galilee! 

The story is done ! Three years of minis- 
try, a bribed disciple, an arrest at midnight, 
Pilate washing his hands of guilty blood, a 
cross swaying in the darkness, an earth- 
quake, and a burial ! 

At last, human history unrolls its vast 
scroll ! The stupendous past is ablaze with 
light ! The voices of the prophets sw r ell into 
thunder-peals of triumph ! Mount Sinai 
kneels before Mount Calvary! The Occi- 
dent takes the place of the Orient in the 
march of the ages, and there, and there, and 


through Judaism ; The Prophets. 


79 


there, seated upon the world’s thrones, is the 
Christ, the revolutions and reformations of 
twenty centuries, the wonders of modern 
civilization, attesting the glories of his tri- 
umphs. Prophet, Priest, King, — all hail! 
“ The Wonderful ! ” 


CHAPTER III. 


CHRIST CONTRASTED WITH THE SCHOOLS. 

On Socrates’ death day, Crito, his disci- 
ple, came to visit him and Socrates asked 
Crito — “ Crito, what time of day is it?” 

Crito answered, “ It is very early in the 
morning.” 

Socrates said, “ Crito, tell me the exact 
time.” 

Crito answered, “ Sir, the dawn is break- 
ing.” 

The dawn is breaking. 

Little did this Greek know that he pro- 
phesied. The dawn was breaking. In Judea 
the clouds were, like unrolling prophecies, 
emerging from the depths of the centuries. 
The hills and mountain summits, like broad- 
browed seers and prophets, were looking 
wistfully down into the future. Socrates 
had been the dawn of a new day for the in- 
tellect of Greece. Jesus of Nazareth was to 
be the dawn of the soul-life of humanity. 

Christ began life in a manger in order to 
gather up the rejected elements of the social 
world. The silences in His life are like 


Christ Contrasted with the Schools. 81 


those of great forests. We know little of 
His childhood days. There is a hint of a 
modest home. Joseph, the father of the 
family, was a Puritan in character. Mary, 
the mother, was like an iEolian harp, sus- 
ceptible to holy influences and of extraordi- 
nary poetic gifts. The song upon her lips 
hath in it the deep swell of the anthem John 
heard in heaven. 

The world’s map at this hour seemed up- 
side down. Athens, the brain of the world, 
had carved upon its streets an altar, “ To 
the unknown God.” The Gentile nations 
through this altar tendered confession of 
absolute ignorance of God. In Jerusalem 
religion was spelled in terms of the temple, 
a priesthood and ceremonial. It did not 
mean life. Judah had lost its sceptre, and 
with it the hope of mastering the world. 
Malachi had been dead four hundred years, 
and no prophetic voice had broken the lone- 
liness of those centuries. In Nazareth, 
Jewish humanity had sunken into pitiful 
degradation. The sneer, “ Can any good 
thing come out of Nazareth?” is the proof 
of the undone and lost condition of the peo- 
ple. 

His quotations from the Old Testament 


82 Christ Contrasted with the Schools. 

showed familiarity with its pages. But 
whatever His education, it was of the most 
meager character. This is proved by the 
question of the people who knew Him, 
“ Whence knoweth this man letters, never 
having learned? ” A mechanic as a world 
teacher had never before been known in his- 
tory. 

He was not educated by the Pharisees. 
They represented legalism — the loveless let- 
ter of the law. It was a school built of 
numberless statutes and speculations. They 
repudiated His teachings because they could 
not understand His message. 

He was not educated by the Sadducees. 
They were the skeptics of their time. They 
denied everything supernatural. They 
bowed their knees only to moral theories. 
They worshipped nothing but tradition. 
There is nothing in Christ reflecting the 
spirit of this school. 

The third school was that of the Essenes. 
They were mystics. They were the intellec- 
tual aristocrats of their times, but there is 
nothing in common between Christ and 
these sages. 

These were the three schools of the Jew- 
ish race. They combined against Christ. 


Christ Contrasted with the Schools. 83 


Not one claimed Him. There is not a 
thread of evidence that Christ ever spent 
one day in any one of these centres of Jewish 
culture. Besides that, Christ was a carpen- 
ter, and the poverty of a carpenter’s home 
would not permit of a priestly education. 

The New Testament narrative states 
these simple facts : First, we see a babe in a 
manger; a few years later, a boy in the 
temple; then follow the years of darkness. 
The curtain lifts and nearly thirty years 
have passed away. We see Him leaving the 
carpenter’s bench and He begins to preach. 

If Jesus were an educated man, we might 
look for contemporaries. The famous 
Greeks were dead. Save one or two, the 
great Romans were dead. Not one Jewish 
intellect honored to-day by scholarship was 
in the world. But it may be said that their 
teachings were known. Search the manu- 
scripts of Rome, Athens and Jerusalem, — 
examine their philosophies, their poetry, 
their morals, — and you will find no traces of 
the materials He used during His public 
ministry. No man can escape mirroring in 
his teaching the trend of thought taught 
him. Now take the Sermon on the Mount. 
It is not Jewish, nor Greek, nor Asiatic. 


84 Christ Contrasted with the Schools. 

Nor is the faintest trace of scholasticism 
discernible. Beyond that sermon are three 
tombs. One contains the wisdom of Athens, 
the second, the statesmanship of Rome, and 
the third, the schools of Jerusalem. His 
sermon builded those tombs. They are like 
Pyramids ; we climb them, we explore them, 
we admire them, but we refuse to live in 
them. 

The history of the world reveals that only 
educated men have ruled its destinies. Jesus 
Christ, the carpenter, is the solitary excep- 
tion to this universal rule. 

India’s greatest prince, who became 
Buddha, established a religion that after- 
wards dominated a third of the world’s mil- 
lions. He was born in a palace. One day 
the corpse of a beggar resolved him to medi- 
tate upon the nobler things of life. He left 
the palace. He studied under the priests of 
India. He formulated a theory of life, 
gathered unto himself multitudes of disci- 
ples, and died of old age. 

Confucius of China had in his veins the 
blood of a race of emperors. At fifteen he 
was a school teacher. Later he studied in 
the royal libraries. He gathered three thou- 
sand disciples, among them nearly an hun- 


Christ Contrasted with the Schools. 85 


dred scholars of superb ability. Under him 
they studied history, poetry, philosophy, and 
religion. Confucius girded China with a 
moral theory beautiful as bronze, and as 
flexible. He also died of old age. 

The tradition regarding Zoroaster of Per- 
sia is, that he was its greatest seer and gave 
to his disciples the noblest thoughts of his 
times. 

We know that Moses was educated in the 
brilliant colleges of Egypt, and Plato in the 
equally splendid schools of Greece. Both 
died of old age. 

Jesus died approximately at the age of 
thirty-three. He died at the age when these 
master world-builders had not even begun 
their careers. 

He came forth of His own accord and as- 
sumed a public position. Note how many- 
sided He is. He resembles in His methods 
a captain of the Salvation Army. He 
preaches upon the street corners to the 
common people. Sometimes, like Socrates, 
He engages in discussion with a representa- 
tive of the schools. Again there is the hint 
of the Jewish Rabbi, — He uses parables. 
Occasionally, like a High Priest, we find 
Him in the temple. He discusses moral 


86 Christ Contrasted with the Schools. 

theories like a Roman Seneca. He is inde- 
pendent in His teaching as a scientist of the 
twentieth century. 

He apparently cares nothing for sacred 
days or holy places. From the porch of the 
temple, upon a mountain summit, or from 
a fishing-boat pushed from the shore of the 
sea, He addresses Himself in one breath to 
His disciples, in the next to the multitudes. 

There is nothing local about Him. 
Types, races, civilizations collapse in His 
presence. He is the great solitary of his- 
tory. He had disciples but no associates. 
Your associate is your peer. Jesus of 
Nazareth had no peers, nor is there a man 
in the w T orld now who would have the moral 
hardihood to claim to be His equal. 

Charles Lamb one time said to a group 
of scholars : “ Gentlemen, if Shakespeare 
should come into the room we would rise to 
our feet, but if Jesus Christ came in, we 
would get down upon our knees.” That is 
the profound distinction between Christ and 
the great men of earth. We cheer the 
names of great men; men weep in the pres- 
ence of Christ. 

We first meet this mysterious personality 
as a Jewish Rabbi. He uses the Oriental 


Christ Contrasted with the Schools. 87 


method, parables. Each parable is simple 
as a cottage, with as many gorgeous rooms 
as a palace. Each parable is serious, digni- 
fied, unembellished, universal in applica- 
tion, exhaustless in interpretation. 

Some of the parables like angel hands 
swing back the marble gates of the ceme- 
tery, and in one swift glance is revealed 
some of the vast secrets of eternity. Take 
the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, 
for example. Others are prophecies requir- 
ing centuries for fulfillment. The parable 
of the Prodigal Son is not overdrawn. It 
is a picture of home life that many know, 
out of a heart-rending experience. But if 
the prodigal means the Gentile world that 
had wasted its moral substance in riotous 
living, that is, in building civilizations, sub- 
serving material ambitions; if the elder 
brother in the parable is the Jewish race 
folded in the sneering Pharisees, that par- 
able becomes a key which unlocks the re- 
ligious history of mankind. 

He is uniformly courteous. He treats a 
leper with the kingly grace he does a Nico- 
demus. Pessimism never clouds His view 
of human nature. Nothing seems premedi- 
tated, yet truth never falls from His lips 


88 Christ Contrasted with the Schools. 

unripe. The most accidental sentence will 
bear the profoundest tests of scholarship. 
He never reserves a great truth for a spe- 
cial occasion. He told the Samaritan 
woman truths worthy an audience of 
Plato’s. He anticipates no debate, He 
never argues. He is not an attorney. He 
does not plead. His thought is regnant, it 
commands! And every utterance has the 
solemnity of a supreme court decision, — it 
is final. 

He never declaims. He employs no rhe- 
toric. His irony never degenerates into a 
sneer. Each sentence is a climax. He ex- 
pounds no theories. He does not speculate. 
Everything is simple, familiar, conversa- 
tional, the atmosphere of scholarship 
wholly lacking. He discusses the sublimest 
truths as easily as we prate about the 
weather. Nothing is tainted with the acid 
of policy or prejudice. Nothing is left in 
the form of a half truth. 

He does not state simply, “ Ideas,” 
or, “ Personal opinions.” He never says, 
“ if,” “ possibly,” ” perchance,” “ I think,” 
“ it is my conviction,” “ I hope,” — 
He is never in doubt! It was said con- 


Christ Contrasted with the Schools. 89 

cerning Him, however, “ He spake as one 
having authority.” 

The Jewish prophet always affirmed, 
“ Thus saith the Lord.” Where did Christ 
get the authority to say, “ I say unto you ”? 
Who gave this carpenter authority to lay 
the Mosaic law under His feet, and say, “ A 
new commandment I give unto you”? 
Age did not give it, He was youthful in 
years. The people never elected Him to be 
their tribune. He was not the spokesman 
for a priesthood. He did not speak for con- 
science’ sake. He was not the champion 
of any party, sect or school. He even de- 
clared that no one had authority but Him- 
self. Where did He get that authority? 

He was a preacher. What was His text? 
Himself! Every conversation, sermon and 
exhortation centers in Himself. Ask Him 
of any law, rule of conduct, the mystery of 
man’s nature, or of God’s nature, He offers 
Himself as the solution. His attitude 
toward men describes all we know of 
“ Brotherhood.” His freedom is the true 
doctrine of liberty. The limitation of His 
action is the boundary of human rights. He 
offers no formal analysis of religion. He 


90 Christ Contrasted with the Schools . 

assumes that His life is the new temple, 
therefore a complete definition. His deeds 
are flesh, covering bones of doctrine. What 
is philanthropy? What is self-denial? 
What is humility? What is temperance? 
What is holiness? All these problems in 
morality and religion find their solutions in 
His personality. “ What would Jesus 
do? ” Answer this question and you in- 
stantly solve every moral dilemma that be- 
longs to the individual, the family, the state 
and the world in all their multitudinous 
inter-relationships. Also, these solutions 
constitute the nervous system of the univer- 
sal truths of the ages. They harmonize 
with the noblest reason of mankind. 

If Jesus had been educated by the schools, 
He would have labored among cultured peo- 
ple. His vocabulary would have glittered 
with technical terms. He would have 
abandoned Himself to speculation, pro- 
pounded a logical system, and combated 
counter theories. 

But here we stand in the presence of 
contradictions: His disciples were fisher- 
men; His sermons were delivered without 
apparent preparation; He does not elabo- 


Christ Contrasted with the Schools. 91 


rate a system; He does not attack the 
schools of His time; He writes no books; He 
quotes no authorities. On the contrary, He 
teaches as if no scholars, priests or states- 
men were in the world. He speaks as 
though His words were the first that human- 
ity had ever heard and would also be the 
last. 

Had he been trained by the schools, His 
opponents would have charged Him with 
insolence, for pretending to know more than 
His masters. On the contrary, they up- 
braided Him for attempting to explain the 
Scriptures without having been taught. 

Take Christ’s denial of authority. He 
denied the authority of His mother. He 
denied the authority of orthodoxy repre- 
sented by the priests. He denied the au- 
thority of the past represented by Moses. 

The skeptic must account for Christ’s 
education. He says, “ His mother taught 
Him.” A poor Jewish peasant woman? 
Impossible! To affirm that He studied 
books is equally incredible. Only kings 
could afford libraries. The poverty of a 
carpenter’s home would not permit the pur- 
chase of costly manuscripts. To say He 


92 Christ Contrasted with the Schools. 

traveled and came in contact with learned 
minds, is an assertion without proof. 
Where did He go? He quotes no one. 

The skeptic says, “ He brooded upon the 
problems of His soul-life.” But this is an 
intellectual absurdity upon the theory that 
Christ was simply a man. To analyze even 
the laws of thinking requires profoundest 
scholarship. To classify the laws of the soul- 
life is a task that no school in the world 
ever attempted. When skeptics ask us to 
believe that a young Jewish carpenter, ex- 
hausted after the day’s toil, investigated 
and discovered the solutions that belong to 
the soul here and in futurity, is again to 
ask us to deny one miracle and accept 
theirs. Ask a lawyer and he will tell you 
that the testimony of the common people is 
always overwhelming, because it represents 
unbought evidence. The people knew Him 
intimately. The indignant questions flame 
from scores of tongues, “ Is not this the 
carpenter? ” “ Whence hath this man let- 
ters, never having learned? ” In other 
words, they questioned His right to teach, 
because He had never gone to school. They 
knew it. They knew Him from infancy. 

Go to a lawyer with a case of supreme 


Christ Contrasted with the Schools. 93 


importance, or to a physician, and each will 
ask for time to consult authorities and get 
expert opinion before pronouncing judg- 
ment. The Pharisees, to bring Him into 
disrepute with the multitude, tried to im- 
peach His witness. They brought Him 
carefully prepared dilemmas. These dilem- 
mas are such marvels of skill that if He 
assents to either alternative, He is undone. 
He does not ask His disciples their opinion 
regarding the question at issue. He does 
not ask for time to consult Moses and the 
prophets. The question is asked, the an- 
swer is given at once. Questions are asked 
involving great social, political and moral 
relationships. The common people ques- 
tioned Him. The Pharisees questioned Him. 
The Scribes, the Lawyers, the Priests — they 
thronged Him with questions. At once the 
answer is given, without hesitation, without 
employing the logical processes of reason 
which we must use, — and the answer lies 
now upon that written page, and the 
scholarship of twenty centuries has never 
been able to lay its finger upon a solitary 
answer and say, “ That answer is wrong! ” 
He builds His doctrines on the things 
that belong to earth. Salt, light, lilies, 


94 Christ Contrasted with the Schools. 


bread, water, birth, fig-trees, sunsets, grass, 
mountains, — He compelled the universe of 
things to expound spiritual truths. Other 
teachers built their doctrines upon axioms, 
proverbs, man’s intuitions, logic, — but no 
one before ordained nature to preach in the 
pulpit, sermons on life, duty, responsibility, 
providence, prayer, immortality and judg- 
ment. 

He taught so simply that we send chil- 
dren to Sabbath School to study His 
thought. But His pictures, or parables, 
which please and teach the children, con- 
tain such profound truth that you cannot 
find two scholars in the world who will 
agree in the spiritual meaning of the same 
parable. 

One day the disciples said, “ Master, 
teach us to pray.” He at once uttered per- 
haps a dozen sentences, nearly all of them 
you find in the Old Testament. He put 
them into combination, and it is now called, 
“ The Universal Prayer.” We have re- 
peated that prayer as individuals, as fami- 
lies, as churches, for centuries. We have 
never exhausted its meaning. 

When He said, “ Our Father in Heaven,” 
how are we to understand that? We can- 


Christ Contrasted with the Schools. 95 

not reason by analogy from a human father 
to a divine Father, because the finite affords 
no possible basis for reasoning up to the 
infinite. When He said, “ Thy kingdom 
come,” what is there among the govern- 
ments of earth to reveal any suggestion of 
the political vision He had in His mind? 
When He said, “ Thy will be done on earth 
as it is in Heaven,” what do we know about 
the jurisprudence of the skies? What are 
the statutes that control the conduct of 
angels? When He said, “ Give us this day 
our daily bread,” what did He mean? We 
assume that bread is the symbol of our 
material wants, and we should ask God to 
supply our earthly needs. 

But there is a deeper meaning. Take 
that prayer upon the forum of the Roman 
Empire, in that period known as the golden 
age : “ Our Father who art in Heaven.” In 
the pronouncement of that sentence, behold 
the temples filled with gods and goddesses 
vanish from the earth ! “ Thy kingdom 

come.” In the presence of this sentence, — 
that Lion, the Roman Empire, which held 
the world in its fangs, begins to sink into 
death. “ Thy will be done.” The schools 
of the Stoics and Epicureans, schools which 


96 Christ Contrasted with the Schools. 


had ruled generations, creep into their 
graves. “ Give us this day our daily 
bread ! ” Here is the genesis of a new 
earth. The causes of the divisions between 
peoples, of the chasm between the classes 
and the masses, of the strife between capital 
and labor, of the tragedy between riches and 
poverty, find in this sentence their death- 
knell. The sentence belongs to the whole 
prayer. Push it backward. “ Give us this 
day our daily bread, according to the laws 
of Thy kingdom which is in Heaven, accord- 
ing to Thy will as wrought in Heaven, hal- 
lowing Thy name, O God, our Father.” 
When men earn bread according to the 
spirit of that prayer, the kingdom of heaven 
will have descended upon earth. 

Humanity did not know how to pray 
until He uttered that petition. The world 
did not even know how to reverence God; 
it did not know what devotion meant. 
Mighty as were the Greeks in expression, 
Greek scholars never presumed to teach 
mankind the method of approaching God in 
worship. 

In all the sculpture of the Greeks there 
is not a solitary piece of marble revealing 
the sentiment of devotion. 


Christ Contrasted with the Schools. 97 


Place the picture of “ The Angelus ” amid 
the glories of Athenian art, and it stands 
alone. Venus is more beautiful than that 
unlovely woman with her hands clasped. 
Apollo is more splendid than that farmer 
who stands with head uncovered in the 
plowed field. But analyze that painting. 
The artist is not trying to portray an ideal 
human form. He purposes to put upon 
canvas, man’s deepest devotional hour, the 
hour of prayer. There stands the human 
race, summed up in man and woman. There 
is a field all written over with the divine 
command, “ By the sweat of thy face shalt 
thou eat bread.” That field is one of the 
noblest portrayals of the dignity and divin- 
ity of toil the world has ever seen. There 
labor is ideal. It has been made radiant 
with hope and with faith, and from the still 
luminous sky seem to fall benedictions. 
What matters it that the forms of the two 
peasants are uncouth and angular, their 
faces seared with care, and bronzed with 
the sun? Above the harsh clods, above 
the labor-worn bodies of man and woman, 
there bends a sympathetic sky. How softly 
those lights blend ! What tenderness of 
color is reflected in the deepening glow of 


98 Christ Contrasted with the Schools. 

the landscape! A beautiful sunset mingles 
with the shadows crossing the field, sug- 
gestive of the exquisite and transfiguring 
hope of immortality, while through the en- 
riched and deepening twilight you can al- 
most hear the tones of the Angelus bell from 
the distant tower. 

Upturn the soil now, and bring to us the 
noblest marbles of Greece, the sculptured 
dreams of pagan gods! Bring to us the 
genius of Phidias, the far-splendoring tri- 
umphs of brush and chisel! Pile Sphinx 
and Pyramid upon Mount Olympus, and let 
those marble and granite prodigies of art 
relive amid our times. Now place among 
them all the Angelus, and humanity attests, 
that the human soul at prayer is a more 
wonderful portrayal of spiritual devotion 
than all the crowned and radiant glories of 
the Olympian gods. 

It was Christianity that made the An- 
gelus possible, since Christianity taught 
humanity how to pray. 


CHAPTER IV. 


CHRIST CONTRASTED WITH THE SCHOLARS. 

He one time said, “ Thou art Peter, and 
upon this rock will I build my Church.” 
The Roman Catholic hierarchy has reared 
itself haughtily upon that and the corre- 
lated sentences. Protestant scholars of 
nearly four centuries have said, “ Rome is 
wrong.” Is it reasonable that a Jewish 
carpenter could utter a sentence that could 
divide modern scholarship into two hemi- 
spheres? 

His teachings are unaffected by climate, 
age, science, civilization. On the other 
hand, His teachings affect men of every cli- 
mate, of every race, of every civilization the 
same way. That is to say, the religion of 
Jesus Christ tabernacled in the Esquimau, 
the Negro, the Anglo-Saxon, the Occidental 
and the Oriental, has the same moral effect 
in the enrichment of character. Christian- 
ity unwarps racial differences as easily as 
fire purges gold of dross. 

He differs from statesmen, philosophers 
and great religious teachers in this: He 


100 Christ Contrasted with the Scholars. 

gave the same doctrines to savage and to 
civilized man. He did not modify dogma 
to suit an era of culture. Also, He is re- 
sponsible not only for what He said, but for 
the logical sequence of His thoughts. No 
statesman is willing to be held responsible 
for an inference. No theologian is willing 
to be responsible for the conclusions of a 
doctrine. But no difference what disturb- 
ance, revolution, or reformation may be pre- 
dicted in the literal interpretation of 
Christ’s kingdom, or the logical sequences 
of its laws, — though there be threatened 
from the view-point of statesmanship an 
almost universal insurrection, the disrup- 
tion of states, or the upheaval of civiliza- 
tion, nevertheless, Jesus of Nazareth is re- 
sponsible. 

No school has risen in nineteen hundred 
years and has been able to maintain its in- 
tellectual existence, by teaching doctrines 
contrary to His. Every skeptic has taught 
many things that are good and true and 
beautiful. But no skeptic has been able to 
teach any moral law, principle, or truth 
that will stand every test but can be found 
rooted in some utterance from the lips of 
Christ. 


Christ Contrasted with the Scholars. 101 


Wherein does Jesus differ from scholars? 
Wise men study causes. They peer into 
nature’s secrets. They try to tabulate the 
laws of thought, They speculate dreamily 
upon the mysteries of life, and of death. But 
Christ never observes nature’s methods as 
does the scientist. He does not attempt to 
discover the laws of thought as did Aris- 
totle. The beauties of the physical world 
never once charmed His lips into poetry, as 
it did David’s. He does not theorize about 
life, nor place fingers, fearful and trembling 
with curiosity, upon the sealed doors of the 
tomb. 

The wisest men have been compelled to 
leave some problems simply stated. They 
were unable to furnish the solution, and 
frankly said so. They died, hoping that 
some succeeding generation would answer 
the questions they could not. For exam- 
ple : “ What is man? ” “ Who and what is 
God? ” “ Is there a future life? ” Here 

are the three unexplored realms of human 
investigation. The scientist, the philoso- 
pher, the priesthoods of all religions have 
walked to the edge of these measureless cir- 
cles of mystery and paused. But within 
the circles, untrodden by mortal genius, we 


102 Christ Contrasted with the Scholars. 

find the footprints of Christ. The only an- 
swers to these questions that the world ac- 
cepts as final, are those He furnished. His 
explanations of God, of life, of death, of 
judgment, of immortality, stand as He left 
them. The universities of the world have 
not added nor subtracted one syllable. 

Did you ever stand upon a mountain-top 
in the night after a storm? The darkness 
then is tragical with a threefold horror. To 
the eye it is blindness; to the ear it is 
silence; to the mind it suggests doubt. 
Fling into the tempest these questions : “ Do 
men still live? Is the earth still in its 
place? Has chaos taken the place of order ?” 
The night says in answer, “ I do not know.” 
But suddenly a mysterious hand thrusts 
from the cloud a flaming torch. In that 
swift blaze of lightning, fields are un- 
masked, a village reveals its white face, 
while landscapes, horizons and forests are 
unshrouded in awful majesty. The wind 
blows out that torch, and again you are in 
a death-struggle with that triple-headed 
skepticism, blindness, silence and doubt. 
Was the vision a delusion, or was it real? 
Who will answer? The morning! The 
dawn is the angel of truth, it will tell ! In 


Christ Contrasted with the Scholars. 103 


the night and storm of life, human reason 
is the lightning flash. It says concerning 
the solutions of the soul, “ I hope these 
things are so.” 

Christ is the witness of the eternal morn- 
ing. He says, u We speak of things we 
know! ” 

Every sage and teacher has been able to 
proclaim doctrines beyond the reach of per- 
sonal realization. Pity, mercy, love thy 
neighbor, are teachings old as humanity, 
yet no one ever pretended to actualize these 
teachings until Christ came. In order to 
practice these virtues, we must imitate 
Christ’s life, not the life of Plato, or of 
Seneca, or of Moses. 

Who can imitate Plato? Is not Seneca 
as unapproachable as a volcano under the 
sea? The prophets of Israel, like chariots 
of fire, circle around the mountain person- 
ality of Moses. Has Moses ever been dupli- 
cated? Christ is unattainable, but He is 
also within the range of the millions. That 
is the miraculous paradox. The unattain- 
able Christ may be attained. 

He was equally wonderful in what He 
did not teach. No student but has tried to 
master some truth in the realms of science, 


104 Christ Contrasted with the Scholars. 

art, poetry, politics, statesmanship, — but 
Christ never uttered a syllable upon any of 
these themes. 

He never saif a word about science, but 
the Christianity of Christ is so inclusive, it 
makes room for every new fact of science. 
It has never suffered injury from any dis- 
covery of science. Theology has. Theology 
is a man-made system. But the Christian- 
ity of Christ has undergone no modification 
in twenty centuries. The reforms that 
have occurred within the Church have 
been inaugurated, simply because of a 
clearer perception of the spirit of Christ. 
If the Christianity of Christ were allowed to 
act naturally, unhindered by prejudice, 
greed, and selfishness, not a scientific 
discovery or invention would leap from the 
brain of genius, but would be used for the 
highest moral interests and material en- 
richment of the human race. 

He said not one word about poetry, but 
the poems of the last twenty centuries that 
have influenced humanity, that helped 
create the modern world, are threaded with 
the gold of His teachings. 

He said nothing about art, but under the 
influence of Christianity, architecture has a 


Christ Contrasted with the Scholars. 105 


new ideal, the Cathedral. It is built in the 
shape of the cross upon which Christ died. 
Take the Pyramids of Egypt, the Pantheon 
of Athens, the temple of Jupiter in Rome, 
and a European Cathedral. Contrast the 
influence upon art to-day of each of these 
types with the influence of the Cathedral. 

Jesus of Nazareth is also the music-soul 
of the modern world. 

He said nothing about politics, as we un- 
derstand that phrase. Yet His teachings 
are moulding the political destinies of the 
human race. Political economy, inter- 
national law, arbitration to take the place 
of war, sociology, — here are four new 
sciences. As sciences, they had no exist- 
ence before He appeared. 

To Him, problem and solution were parts 
of one anthem. Jesus Christ left behind 
Him no interrogation points. Since He 
came, the skies have lost their strangeness. 
The divine presence is seen, is felt, in the 
deep woods and in the soft glow of mid- 
nights. The springtime is a poet, summer 
is a scarlet-robed Cardinal, and winter 
preaches to us like a prophet. 

Beethoven’s funeral dirge contains here 
and there a note of triumph. Death is no 


106 Christ Contrasted with the Scholars. 

longer a Sphinx. We robe the dead in royal 
vestments of floral splendor, and instead of 
despair, we whisper the beautiful German 
farewell, “ Until we meet again.” 

Take the Sermon on the Mount. In the 
shoreless realms of literature, there is noth- 
ing like this. Its simplicity is that of a 
brook wandering aimlessly through a 
meadow. Its ocean depths have never been 
sounded. We could better afford to have 
the sky emptied of its suns than lose the 
truths orbed in that firmament of speech. 
It is the profoundest philosophy, yet there 
is not in it the hesitancy of speculation. It 
states quite all the truths of morals, and 
that, without argument. It is not logical, 
but in every line, you hear the regal voice 
of authority. It is not a statesman’s man- 
ual, yet lies at the foundation of modern 
civilization. It is addressed to neither sex, 
but includes both. It applies equally to the 
individual, to the race, or to humanity. 

That sermon is Christ’s photograph of 
Himself. 

A man modifies his creed with increase of 
knowledge. The mature mind repudiates 
gilded youthful notions. Christ never al- 
tered a single sentence. Nor can you dis- 


Christ Contrasted with the Scholars. 107 


cover a trace of increasing wisdom in any 
of His teachings. His first utterances are 
as sky-deep as His last words upon the 
cross. 

The wisest man, in his effort to teach 
mankind, has in some unguarded moment 
set forth a doctrine that led to vicious re- 
sults. 

But this is not a description of Christ. 
When He came, plans had been tried and 
failed. He apparently knew nothing of 
them. But His solutions are not at the 
expense of any race, tribe, or individual, or 
of any age or condition, whether of naked 
savagery, or a civilization vestured with 
centuries of achievements, and a forest of 
universities. 

Nothing that Christ said or did, actually 
or inferentially, has the brain of these cen- 
turies pronounced worthless, suspicious, 
visionary, injurious, dangerous, or age- 
worn, and therefore out of date. Instead of 
being twenty centuries in the past, He con- 
tinually hails us from the midst of cen- 
turies far away in the future. 

The disciples of other men have climbed 
to heights of wisdom and influence equal to 
their masters, and often surpassed them. 


108 Christ Contrasted with the Scholars. 

But no disciple of Christ, nor one of His 
enemies, has ever claimed to set aside the 
moral authority of Jesus Christ on the 
ground of intellectual or moral superiority. 

The trite and well-known question of the 
Christian man who says to the skeptic, 
“ Whom will you substitute for Jesus 
Christ? ” is really the heart of the ques- 
tion. Whenever skepticism can affirm a 
greater than Christ is here, then only will 
we turn our allegiance from the Man of 
Nazareth. 

Wise men need interpreters. Their say- 
ings are dark. They state truths in frag- 
ments. Their disciples must walk behind 
and apologize with explanations, add defini- 
tions, and reconcile differences. But 
Christ’s word was so simple that the com- 
mon people heard Him gladly and do to-day. 
A Salvation Army captain can preach 
Christ’s word with quite the effectiveness 
of a theologian. 

No great man ever dared array his teach- 
ings against the moralist, the priest, the 
king, the civilization of his times, as Christ 
did. He rebuked all of these, then held up 
His own life as the model for each one. 

Of scholars, what the man says, is inde- 


Christ Contrasted with the Scholars. 109 


pendent of himself. To understand a man’s 
teaching we do not need to know the man. 
It is not necessary to know anything of the 
personality and spirit of Moses, or of Con- 
fucius, or of Buddha, to understand their 
teachings ; but with Christ, the condition of 
understanding what He said, is a knowledge 
of His spirit and personality, in the most 
tender and loving relation as a disciple. 

That makes it a moral impossibility for 
the skeptic to discuss Christianity intelli- 
gently. Christianity is not a theological 
system, — Christianity is Christ; and not to 
know Christ is to fail to understand Chris- 
tianity. 

We are the living witnesses to these facts. 
The world to-day measures the principles of 
Buddha, Confucius, Plato, Moses, by com- 
pelling them to parallel the teachings of 
Christ. Whether what the ancients said 
was morally true or not is tested by weigh- 
ing their words against the contents of the 
Gospels. The thought of Jesus Christ is the 
crucible test of all moral and religious truth 
just as His life is the moral test of all life. 

The scholar announces only one side of a 
doctrine. For example, Plato was the 
founder of Idealism. Aristotle, his pupil, 


110 Christ Contrasted with the Scholars. 

antagonized this theory and taught Real- 
ism. Take Calvin and Wesley as types of 
mind who saw the same truth from different 
angles. But it has never occurred to any 
scholar to teach the opposite to any moral 
principle that Christ taught. 

Every university is an altar step leading 
to the skies. The skies ! What lies beyond 
that silence? The stars, like sentinels, 
keep their swords unsheathed, challenging 
us to lay siege to the hidden city. Only one 
gate is ajar. It is the grave. But again we 
pause. To peer over the ramparts of futur- 
ity we must enter that gate. Alas, mortal 
man shrinks back. 

To listen to the whisper freezing upon the 
lips of the dead, to look in the direction 
where a snowy finger points, to see in the 
glazed eye a map of futurity, to read upon 
the torn page of that pulseless body a mes- 
sage from the skies, — who can do all this? 

The dead ! Upon that brow, a veil white 
with mystery, is stretched, while under- 
neath, an unearthly glow is seen as if a dis- 
tant dawn had kindled there and died. 
Those eyes half shut, like suns eclipsed, un- 
fold a dark so wide, so deep, that earth 
seems sinking into night. 


Christ Contrasted with the Scholars. Ill 


The air seems touched with fainting 
echoes of far-off songs, but none can catch 
those wild half notes that thrill and vanish 
in a breath. 

The winds that stoop to kiss that cheek, 
then touch yours, stifle the heart’s quick 
beat as though dread wings had swept your 
face and then passed on. 

Only one thing we know, — the dew con- 
gealed upon that brow foreheralds this : 
that for that one a new day hath dawned, 
here, there, somewhere, we cannot tell. To 
the sane mind, death is a horror because we 
know not its meaning. 

But to Jesus of Nazareth life and death 
were equal. He was as serene in his affir- 
mations about the world beyond as He was 
about the world here. Death was not an 
untranslated mystery to one who could say, 
with the last breath, “ It is finished.” Life 
and death were chapters in one book. He 
understood both. 

Here is one limitation of genius : A man, 
no difference how wise he is, does not under- 
stand himself. Socrates said, “Know thy- 
self ; ” but Socrates did not know himself. 
The supreme mystery of earth is human 
personality. Again we see the supernatural 


112 Christ Contrasted with the Scholars. 

in Christ. He knew Himself perfectly. 
He lived alone, existing for Himself, in a 
manner infinite and absolute. In moments 
of ecstasy, He utters no shout of triumph. 
In suffering, there is no hesitation, skep- 
ticism, or despair. These are necessary 
pages in His life; He knows their causes 
and results. 

He swept his eye over the past and said, 
quietly, “ Before Abraham was, I am.” 
That is, He was the cause and the final 
cause of history. He gazed upon His pres- 
ent struggles and said, “ Thus it behooveth 
the Son of Man to suffer, that the Scriptures 
may be fulfilled.” He identified His tears 
with centuries of prophecy. Then He fixed 
His eye upon futurity. He saw the end of 
the world and Himself seated upon the 
throne of God, as Judge of men and Sover- 
eign of angels. 

He built no schools, erected no institu- 
tions, formulated no creed, gave forth no 
set of rules, ordained no priests, fashioned 
no ceremonies, founded no government, set 
apart no sacred days, destroyed no party or 
sect, employed no weapons of state, school 
or society, allied himself to no class, showed 
favoritism to no system; but reversing all 


Christ Contrasted with the Scholars. 113 


methods known to men, he repudiated every 
agency of human triumph, welcomed the di- 
rect elements of defeat, and then left the 
world with nothing but His promise of 
earth-wide victory. He had no prototype, 
and He left no successors. 

No one took up His work where He laid 
it down, as inventors do. No one walked 
in His footsteps until they paused, and then 
passed on. Discoverers do that. No one 
added to His teachings and restated His 
system, as philosophers have done. No one 
gathered up the frightened disciples and 
said, “ Come, I will be your Master,” as re- 
formers do. Jesus Christ has never been 
duplicated. He has had no imitators. 
Whether the cross is too heavy, or the road 
too rough, the footprints of Calvary have 
never been marred or blotted out by the 
footprints of another. 

He broke armies across His knee by sim- 
ply saying, “ Put up thy sword.” By living 
the ordinary life of a citizen, He has un- 
sceptered kings of their royalty. His is the 
gentleness of thistledown, driving before it 
the storm wind of race prejudice. He who 
never wore a garland of chivalry, inaugu- 
rated ages of chivalry. He who envied the 


114 Christ Contrasted with the Scholars. 

foxes their holes and birds their nests, re- 
established the home and family upon 
foundations that wars, migrations, and rev- 
olutions have never shaken. He whose holi- 
ness was godlike and knew no sin, yet 
planned the redemption of the world from 
sin and gave hope to millions of men and 
women, dying in their sins. 

The universal fact of genius is to rise to 
its zenith during life. The grave may be a 
vindication, but it cannot b3 the apotheosis 
of victory. Genius succeeds. That is the 
proof it is genius. It makes the realms of 
life glitter with triumphs. But here again is 
a contradiction. The tomb of Christ is the 
cornerstone of his achievements. His death 
was the interpretation of His life. He 
waited until death to live. He had a hand- 
ful of disciples while on earth, and count- 
less millions since. Judged by the tests of 
men, His life was an absolute failure and 
His death the most irretrievable defeat. 
But time has proved that He reversed the 
tides of universal experience. When the 
hour came for Him to leave the world, His 
death was solitary as His life. 

John Brown, whose scaffold shook Amer- 
ica like an earthquake; Joan of Arc, whose 


Christ Contrasted with the Scholars. 115 


burning illuminated France and Europe; 
Savonarola, whose dying whisper broke in 
thunders over the dark ages ; Socrates, 
drinking the poison flowing through the 
veins of corrupt Athens, — these are mar- 
tyrs! But in the crucifixion of Jesus 
Christ the world has seen in Him, about 
Him, a mystery, so God-like in grandeur 
that we do not think of it except as the 
birth hour of a new humanity, a place 
where the heart gets such a vision of the 
eternities that we kneel and pray, each for 
himself, “ God be merciful to me, a sin- 
ner ! ” 

Measure great men by their disciples. 
Concede all that can be reasonably asked, 
and what disaster would compare with that 
disaster to the world if we should blot from 
the page of history a few of Christ’s disci- 
ples? 

Here is the map of the world. 

Blot out Washington and the Puritans, 
and this republic is no longer free. Blot 
out the Christian Columbus, and half the 
world has disappeared from the map. Blot 
out John Knox, and Scotland has fallen. 
Blot out John Huss, and Bohemia is with- 
out hope. Blot out the Christian Guten- 


116 Christ Contrasted with the Scholars. 

berg, and the printing press is vanished. 
Blot out Luther, Calvin, and Wesley, and 
we are prostrate in the dark ages. Blot 
out Dante and Savonarola, and Italy kneels 
to the throne of Lorenzo. Blot out Zwingli, 
and Switzerland is a mountain solitude. 
Blot out Peter the Hermit, and the march 
of the Crusaders, and the last spark of civil- 
ization has died in modern Europe. Blot 
out the Christian Charles Martel, and the 
Mohammedan shadow crushes the world. 
Blot out Paul, the Apostle, and humanity 
kneels before that monster, Nero. 

Blot Jesus Christ Himself from history, 
and twenty centuries of art, inventions, and 
discoveries, twenty centuries of liberty, 
progress, and civilization, twenty centuries 
the most wonderful in the world’s history, — 
all have vanished. 

Blot Jesus Christ from history, and 
America, Europe, Russia, the modern 
progress in China, India, Africa, the gigan- 
tic reformations, revolutions, and liberty- 
compelling upheavals of two hemispheres, — 
all are dead. 

Blot out that manger cradle of Bethle- 
hem, and the Roman Empire was without 
purpose, Athens had no mission, Egypt was 


Christ Contrasted with the Scholars. 117 


an accident, and Judaism, with thousands 
of years of prophecy, was the frightful mut- 
terings of a race damned with insanity. 

Blot out that manger, — then the poets, 
prophets, seers and martyrs of sixty cen- 
turies, the temples, altars, priests of every 
clime and every age, all these have lived 
without purpose and died without hope. 
Mark well the conclusion of Modern Skep- 
ticism! If Jesus Christ was earth-born and 
not of heaven, religion is a lie, every page 
of history is a fathomless riddle, civiliza- 
tion is a delusion, fate rules the world, and 
the earth itself is no longer a part of the 
moral universe of God ! 


CHAPTER V. 


CHRIST CONTRASTED WITH GREAT MEN. 

One type of greatness is the man who 
sums up within himself the spirit of the age. 
Although a mountain, he is composed of the 
same dust as the valley. He is a sun whose 
dame is kindled out of the hopes and aspira- 
tions of the human race. But this does not 
describe Christ. He is not the echo of the 
national spirit. Upon His brow is not 
written the thought of the age. On the other 
hand, He contradicted the political dreams 
of Israel. He was a bitter disappointment 
to Priest and Pharisee. There is nothing 
in Christ that even faintly resembles the 
vitriolic pride, intolerance, and the throne- 
bewitched eyes of Israel. 

A man is great because he is the embodi- 
ment of one idea, Victor Cousin says, never 
more than one. Human nature cannot rise 
to such heights as to be able to humanize 
more than one sublime truth. Columbus, 
Calvin, Bruno, Napoleon, Washington, — to 
name such men is to name a list of immense 
ideas; but each man expresses but one. 


Christ Contrasted with Great Men. 119 

Columbus is not identified with the idea 
that belongs to Luther. Calvin and Wash- 
ington are not ministering spirits of the 
same regnant truth. One idea upon the 
altar of a man’s heart is the law of human 
greatness. But the one supreme thought 
that Christ represents cannot be named. 
He was not swayed by a dazzling hope, as 
men are, nor was He the soldier of some 
masterful ideal. 

Another type of human genius is the Re- 
former. Upon his thoughts and actions, a 
new epoch opens its gates. This man is 
mysterious. He is an hurricane at mid- 
night. But in that terrifying hour is being 
wrought a new civilization. But this does 
not image forth Christ. He is not a John 
Baptist of progress. In His hand there is 
no battle-axe. He is as calm as the heart 
of the seas. 

Great men employ the forces of law and 
the appeal of self-interest. One demonstra- 
tion of the divinity of Christ lies in the fact 
that increasing ages increase His influence; 
yet he ignored every weapon used in world 
building. 

Another type of mortal greatness is the 
Poet. 


120 Christ Contrasted with Great Men. 

To the eye of commercial clay, a garret, a 
bed of straw, a fireless hearth, — these are 
kinsmen to the grave. But soft, a Poet 
dwells in that lofty place where poverty 
mocks with rags! From that broken win- 
dow pane his eye peers forth. He sees the 
morning untenting the skies. The East is 
a sea whose waves bring mysterious whis- 
pers from the great beyond. Around him 
sweep in mighty surges the prophecies of 
the new day. Afar off the clouds begin un- 
folding their radiance, splendor overtopping 
splendor, range above range, altitude above 
altitude, height above height, and far above 
the loftiest shining peak the Poet beholds 
the horizons lifting The Morning, like the 
New Jerusalem, from God out of Heaven! 
So with Christ’s words. The soul hath 
the poet’s insight. Each sentence contains 
a crimson flash of glory. Each idea is deep 
as an Eastern horizon. Each truth unfolds 
the coming dawn, destined to pour a noon- 
day of righteousness upon humanity. 

The Poet is the priest of civilization. 
He looks upon the past and weeps. He 
feels the pulse throbs of millions of hearts, 
and dreams. In the far away future he 
sees the solutions of world problems. He 


Christ Contrasted with Great Men. 121 


gathers up those solutions into a song, 
waves his white hand, “ Hail and Farewell,” 
and disappears. 

What does the poet leave behind? A 
footprint and a watchword. That foot- 
print marks the path of progress. That 
celestial watchword becomes the secret of 
civilization. Not what the scientist thinks, 
not the tools of inventive genius, not what 
senates plan, but what the poet dreams, is 
the hope of the future. 

O Spirit of Poetry ! Born of the twilight 
and morning, child of the rainbow and the 
star, we hail thee as earth’s glorified angel ! 
We behold thy purpling footprints in au- 
tumnal woods when day is done; transform- 
ing the rude worm into a creeping prophecy 
of wings; girding the mountain with a sil- 
ver tiara of snow. And wherever flowers 
kneel in perfumed raiment before the altars 
of the hills; where brooks do sing sad 
requiems amid October days, and happy 
children laugh in dreams, — there is thy tent 
and dwelling-place. Thou dwellest far 
down, down deep in human hearts, where 
funeral trumpets of woe peal forth dread 
tidings, and bugle-like emotions thrill with 
ecstasy and peace. And up, high up, where 


122 Christ Contrasted with Great Men. 

holy aspirations flash their wings, and all 
the mountain-tops of life are luminous with 
joy. And out, far out upon the sea of human 
action, where deep calls unto deep, where 
Orion’s suns, like processional torch-bear- 
ers, flame in the footprints of national 
achievements ! Yes, wherever the slave’s 
chain is melted in the hot breath of battle, 
wherever the martyr’s scaffold is arched 
into cathedral-like solemnity, wherever 
prophets press their fire-kissed lips against 
black thrones of tyranny, and melt them 
down, there art thou regnant, O Spirit of 
Poetry, dweller of earth and sea and sky ! 

But this does not describe Jesus of 
Nazareth. Not one wave of poet’s music 
thrills his speech during His public minis- 
try. 

Great men come in groups. Witness the 
Apostolic Age, the era of the Reformation, 
and the Revolutionary War. They seem to 
recognize their limitations, and rush upon 
the battlefield of their times in battalions. 

The utter loneliness of Christ is super- 
natural. He not only lives in an hour deso- 
late of masterful genius, but He adds to His 
own solitude. He repudiates the fellow- 
ship of the schools. He abandons the tern- 


Christ Contrasted with Great Men. 123 


pie. He does not even for a moment seek 
refuge under the shadow of great names. 
Nevertheless, this solitary voice reaches the 
universal mind and heart. His tears, like 
seas, gather up the world’s rivers of an- 
guish. He keeps His hold upon mankind, 
largely because “ He was a man of sorrows 
and acquainted with grief.” 

Another human genius is a picture of the 
nation in action. What he says and does, . 
the people are saying and doing on a smaller 
scale. He is a colossus, and the generation 
uses his footprints as a map of the times. 

But Christ is nothing like this. To the 
contrary, he lived as if upon another planet. 
The proof of Christ’s unlikeness to His age 
lies in this fact: No nation can wholly re- 
pudiate its son. A nation is like an indi- 
vidual; it cannot despise its own thinking. 
But Christ was rejected by the representa- 
tive thinkers of His time. His acceptance 
by lepers, the maimed, the ignorant and the 
mob, is a pathetic demonstration of the gulf 
that separated Him from the religious 
forces of the period. 

Great men are often the products of the 
age. Shakespeare was the creation of the 
age of Elizabeth. Columbus was a sail 


124 Christ Contrasted with Great Men . 

swept across the Atlantic by the scientific 
investigations of his time. Germany was 
in the flower of the Reformation, whose 
fruit was Martin Luther. It was the 
slavery of the Jewish race that lifted the 
voice of Moses into an archangel’s majesty. 

Now look at the condition of the times at 
the birth of Christ. Athens was a sculp- 
tured ruin of theories. Not a tongue upon 
the Tiber, but was fettered with tyranny. 
Jerusalem was dying. Except Hillel and 
Samuel, there was hardly a distinguished 
Jewish intellect. Justice was dead. Lib- 
erty was a memory. Morality was a 
theory, and religion was clasping fingers 
with idolatry. 

Somehow, men seemed to know that de- 
liverance could not come through their own 
creations. Therefore the schools were 
abandoned. The temples were empty. The 
throne only deepened the immense darkness. 
As if swayed by a common impulse, the 
nations turned their faces skyward, and 
there arose the Sun of Righteousness, who 
is to-day the conscience of the world, — the 
all-pervading moral influence of modern 
times. 

Great men break down somewhere and 


Christ Contrasted with Great Men. 125 


unmask some hidden weakness. A man 
will seek some masterful human joy pol- 
luted with sin; or covet the insolence of 
power; or ambition will enthrall his life 
and make him cruel; or he will kneel, the 
slave to some habit, tradition, custom or su- 
perstition. He is often violent, or hateful, 
miserly, cowardly, fanatical, or bigoted. 

But none of these things is found in 
Christ. Amid every conceivable relation- 
ship, he is never discovered flung to earth 
in mortal weakness. With aristocrats and 
the poverty-stricken, with timid disciples 
or the excited multitude, alone or upon the 
streets, when raising the dead, or in con- 
flict with the Pharisees, in Gethsemane, or 
before Pilate, upon the cross, abandoned by 
His disciples, — not only does He not falter, 
but each calamity, like the twilight, adds 
the lustre of new virtues to the firmament 
of His personality. 

Another characteristic of human genius 
is his lack of self-consciousness. He 
walks with eyes closed, yet straight to the 
goal. He never boasts of his plans. He 
promises nothing. He lives serenely inno- 
cent that he is exalted above his fellows. 
He cannot and does not form any estimate 


126 Christ Contrasted with Great Men. 

of the value of his ideas, nor does he predict 
the range of his influence! Here is a dis- 
tinct departure. Christ outlines His plans 
in advance. He paints a map of His future 
victories. He is the fulfillment of pro- 
phecy, and He knows it. He is the begin- 
ning of a new world history, and He knows 
it. He is the centre of the moral universe 
of man, and He knows it. 

“ Familiarity breeds contempt ” is an 
impish law in social life. No man is great 
in the eyes of his intimate friends. But 
intimacy with Christ as a Rabbi, culmin- 
ated in His worship by His disciples. That 
is true now. Intimacy with Christ makes a 
man feel sinful, repentant, and brings him 
into the mood of wanting His forgiveness 
and blessing. To look into His eyes is to 
feel the accusing gaze of Heaven searching 
your heart. 

No great man was ever the incarnation 
of several distinct personalities. 

Christ was a miracle of multipersonality. 
He was a carpenter, a physician, a fisher- 
man, a philanthropist, a citizen, a subject, a 
servant, a patriot, a king, a prophet, a seer, 
a priest, a teacher, a lawgiver, a judge. 
Among conservatives, a radical, and by rad- 


Christ Contrasted with Great Men. 127 


icals upbraided as conservative. Judged by 
Stoics to be Epicurean, and by Epicureans 
denounced as a Stoic. Hated by some as 
an Iconoclast, by others for his defence of 
old institutions. Eclectic in his thought, 
yet independent. A friend of aristocrats 
and of outcasts. In harmony with the 
noblest spirit of Judaism, and the best ele- 
ments of Gentile thought, yet so vast his 
character that the human universe of great 
souls occupies no more room across the life 
of Christ than does the milky way of stars 
across the sky. 

The great man labors for a people. 
Buddha tried to lift India. Confucius tried 
to lift China. Zoroaster tried to lift Persia. 
Plato tried to lift Athens. Caesar tried to 
lift Rome. Luther tried to lift Germany. 
Knox tried to lift Scotland. Washington 
tried to lift America. John Brown tried to 
lift the Negro. Each one succeeded only 
partially, but Christ claimed, “If I be 
lifted up, I will draw all men unto me.” 
Twenty centuries vindicate His claims. 

With the appearance of a great man, the 
rule has been that people grow temporarily 
better; then worse than ever. Look at the 
corruption of Judaism, in spite of Moses 


128 Christ Contrasted with Great Men. 

and the prophets. Or, at Athens and Rome, 
in spite of their sages. Or, at India and 
China, in spite of Buddha and Confucius. 
Christ alone has made humanity better. 
The world is purer now than it was then. 
It will be nobler to-morrow than it is to- 
day. No one questions that. Had His 
teachings been those of a mere man, their 
influence would not have survived the gen- 
eration in which He lived. 

Men do not die for great men. Men die 
for a cause, a principle, for a country, but 
tens of thousands have died for Christ. 
They said so. Thomas Paine, Voltaire, 
Rousseau, Bolingbroke, Ingersoll, — how 
many men have gone to martyrdom for their 
sakes? 

Another fact of human genius is its per- 
sistency. Every type duplicates itself in 
human form in each successive generation. 
The world is never barren of great men. 
The discoverer, the poet, the prophet, the 
martyr, the statesman, the scholar, the re- 
former, — these men, it may be said, never die 
childless. They replenish succeeding gen- 
erations. It needs but favoring conditions, 
and a majestic soul appears. Let a crisis 
arise, and frowning eyes are seen above the 


Christ Contrasted with Great Men. 129 

horizon. When vice has twisted its coils 
around sacred things, suddenly the shout of 
the reformer is heard. Nothing foreheralds 
his approach. The times may seem un- 
propitious. Public opinon is not prepared 
for his advent. Nevertheless he comes, and 
after him comes another, and another, and 
still others, until the battle is won. 

Here, again, history is contradicted. 
Christ has had no successors. Neither was 
He the duplicate of any pre-existing type. 
We find vague hints of a Messiah here and 
there in literature. We find foreshadow- 
ings of a mysterious advent in the Old 
Testament. Men have seen in David, in 
Jacob, in Elijah, and in Abraham dull 
flashes as of some far-off conflagration, but 
that is all. A visitor from another world 
could not tell, by watching the dawn, what 
the sun was like. One moment it would 
seem that a vast pearl was advancing. 
Then a gorgeous rose color gilds the firma- 
ment, and he would predict that a shining 
mountain of gold was rising in the East. If 
he were to prophesy the character of the 
sun, its size, and shape, and coloring, by the 
massive changes building in the morning 
sky, he would declare that not one, but mul- 


130 Christ Contrasted with Great Men. 

titudes of suns were rising, each different in 
color and of dreadful majesty. Imagine 
his amazement when a world appeared, 
seemingly like a shield in girth and in diam- 
eter. 

That was why the Jews were disap- 
pointed in Christ. In the Old Testament 
He was seen as a lamb, a lion, a prince, a 
king, a morning star, a sun of righteousness, 
the wonderful one, the chief among ten 
thousand. Then came a carpenter. In- 
stead of being born in Jerusalem, He comes 
from a moth-eaten village. Instead of a 
sword, instead of a scepter, instead of vic- 
tory, they saw a peasant, poverty, defeat, 
the cross, the dying eyes, the tomb. He was 
not a John Baptist rebuking a voluptuous 
court. He was not a Socrates introducing 
a new era of culture. He was not an Alex- 
ander, sowing civilization from a war char- 
iot. He was not a Moses leading a nation 
out of bondage. He was not a Luther mak- 
ing war with a corrupt church. He was 
not a Latimer dying for the sake of an idea. 
He was not a Napoleon trying to uprear an 
empire upon cannon. He was not a Dar- 
win trying to alphabet the facts of earth 


Christ Contrasted with Great Men . 131 


into scientific systems. He was not a 
Browning transmuting the prose of life into 
poetry. He was not a Michael Angelo 
resurrecting the dead body of art. He was 
not a Columbus charting new seas, and add- 
ing new continents to the world’s map. 

Only one type of mortal greatness re- 
mains, — the Prophet! Was He a prophet 
like those of the Old Testament? 

The prophet belongs in a rank an eagle’s 
flight above the ranks of earth’s immortals. 
He is in a distinct class. He resembles no 
one. 

I once looked upon the Pacific Ocean when 
it seemed like a vast poem. Anon, it moved 
in priestly solemnity. Then it flung its 
billows against the cliffs like a reformer 
hurling anathemas against the evil of his 
times. In the morning it wore the serene 
face of a martyr upon the scaffold. At 
noon, it had the statesman’s grandeur of 
personality. Again the mood shifted, and 
it seemed a gigantic Socrates brooding upon 
world problems. Compress that ocean into 
a man, and you have the prophet ! 

He salutes us from afar. He seems to 
dw T ell in eternity. The prophet’s eyes have 


132 Christ Contrasted with Great Men. 

the quality of mountain summits. When 
the world is dark his eyes are beautiful 
with light. His soul is rude. His voice is 
a scream. He mocks our institutions. He 
threatens us with, “ Woe, woe ! ” The 
world has always martyred the prophet, 
thinking he was a wild beast in human 
form. 

No marble monument for the prophet! 
His grave is weed-grown and forgotten. 
But men say, “ His speech is hushed 
now ! ” Not so ! He thrilled men’s lives 
liks harps, and that music cannot die. His 
bugled voice with resurrection power 
aroused dead hopes. His tears were light- 
nings smiting tyrannies. His frown flung 
terror upon the hearts of Kings. He stood 
for God amid great crimes. Like fabled 
Atlas, he carried this sad world upon the 
strong shoulders of His love. Now lies he 
there! But the prophet’s grave is the 
cradle that God uses, to rock humanity 
from the infancy of barbarism into the man- 
hood of civilization. 

But in this battle-voiced legion of angel- 
men, from Moses to John the Baptist, from 
John the Baptist until now, — wherein do 


Christ Contrasted with Great Men. 133 


we find a place in their ranks where Christ 
may stand? Which one does He resemble? 
Look closely into those faces and find His 
image hinted forth that we may say, “ Here 
is one like Him ! ” 


CHAPTER VI. 


CHRIST’S INFLUENCE DURING “ THE DARK 
AGES." 

In the annals of earth, it has never oc- 
curred that misunderstanding the teaching 
of a great man has plunged the world into 
night, or that a profounder insight into his 
teachings inaugurated a new civilization. 
Christ is the solitary exception to this uni- 
versal rule. The Dark Ages were the direct 
result of a misapprehension on the part of 
the Church of the mind of Christ. The mod- 
ern world had its beginning in the hour 
when “ the Truth as it is in Jesus ” was 
visioned into the souls of a few of His 
disciples. 

There is the page of history, — Mark! 

The moment Christianity began to be in- 
terpreted as Churchianity the Dark Ages 
grappled Europe in a death struggla 

The organization of men to be the agency 
of Christianity developed into the institu- 
tion called the Church, and the Church, to 
speedily accomplish its ends, put on govern- 
mental power. But all governmental power 


Christ's Influence during “The Dark Ages." 135 

rests on the lion’s majesty, brute strength. 
Every throne in the world is arched upon 
polished blades of steel. Therefore, it was 
a blunder to unite the Church and the state, 
from the nature of the two things. The 
state is founded upon the law of justice and 
right conduct. The state depends upon the 
consent of the governed. The will of the 
people must ever be the foundation of em- 
pire. The Church rests upon the law of 
love. It insists not simply on right con- 
duct, but upon holiness. It looks beyond 
the consent of the majority. God fixes the 
standard of rule and conduct. 

The state rests upon expediency, policy, 
and what is practicable, while Christianity 
rests upon the law of God, regardless of ex- 
pediency, policy or practicability. The 
state seeks material prosperity, and has 
only earthly ambitions. The Church stands 
for spiritual life, even at the cost of mate- 
rial prosperity, and, instead of looking 
upon the present hour, calmly and stead- 
fastly gazes into the future for the consum- 
mation of its plans, not merely into the cen- 
turies, but into eternity. 

The Church in its governmental relation- 
ships resorted to that universal strength of 


136 Christ's Influence during “ The Dark Ages ” 

government, and finally appealed to force. 
It fought new ideas with scaffolds. It tried 
to sway public sentiment with a prison. It 
brought great doctrines to trial as criminals 
are brought before jury boxes. The 
Church saw apparent danger in new scien- 
tific investigations. It thought it beheld 
the downfall of Christianity, in the presence 
of some broader interpretation of dogma. 
It believed absolutely that heresy was trea- 
son, that doubt was criminal, and that free 
thinking was the Judas Iscariot of philoso- 
phy. Then the Church, imitating the meth- 
ods of monarchs and tyrants, adopted the 
rack, the dungeon and fire, as a prevention 
and cure; and the result was, midnight 
spread over the human intellect, and in that 
inferno of darkness, the human conscience 
became delirious, the moral virtues un- 
furled flags of treason, and the historian 
has set the seal of immortal infamy upon 
that frightful epoch and called it, “ The 
Dark Ages.” 

Who is the poet of that hour? Dante! 

Dante’s poem is a hideous picture of the 
Dark Ages. The Dark Ages are the deep 
footprints in history, where humanity 
paused! Dante describes that pause under 


Christ’s Influence during “The Dark Ages’’ 137 

a parable. He starts on a journey with 
Virgil. Dante is humanity, and Virgil is 
the past. This describes the Dark Ages. 
Humanity, leaning upon the past, tries to 
move forward. The journey ends in hell. 

Hell, in this poem, is simply a terrific 
vision of the social, moral and politi- 
cal conditions of the times. In this world 
of shadow there are degrees of suffering. 
Some of the lost are pursued by devils; 
some are wrapped in the coils of monster 
serpents; there is the profound abyss, the 
lake of fire, and the frozen sea. In the 
midst of this arctic zone of ice, Dante tells 
us, he saw a monster gnawing the head of 
a man. That describes the Dark Ages. 
Vice was gnawing into the brain of civiliza- 
tion. A warning blazes up from this abyss 
of anguish. Dante is a prophet. He sum- 
mons nations yet unborn into his presence 
and cries, “ Lean upon the past, and prog- 
ress ends; surrender to materialism and 
hell begins; abandon hope, all ye nations 
who enter here.” 

Dante also saw a human arm frozen in 
the ice. Below, in the black flood, the 
man’s body was writhing. But the fingers 
that belonged to the frozen arm were reach- 


138 Christ's Influence during “The Dark Ages ” 

ing upward, clasping and unclasping. This 
is Dante’s prophecy of the Reformation. 
The human mind was frozen in the ice of 
the Dark Ages, but its fingers reached 
toward the sky, clasping and unclasping. 
Those fingers are soon to take a fresh hold 
upon the hand of God. 

Dante’s poem is not a mighty dirge, set 
to music by the imagination. 

The facts are craped upon the centuries. 

The Dark Ages are there, behold them ! 

At last the human mind is buried alive. 
What happens? 

The seventh century fell prostrate. The 
eighth century was utterly undone. Scarce- 
ly a single illustrious son adorned its times. 
The ninth century gave birth to Charle- 
magne and Alfred the Great, and as if ex- 
hausted, fell back into the old lethargy. 
The tenth century beheld the coronation of 
Otto, Emperor of the West, a symptom of 
progress in Germany, and with these ex- 
ceptions, resembles a mountain solitude. 
The eleventh century listens to the voice of 
Peter the Hermit and the march of the Cru- 
saders. We gather around the tomb of the 
twelfth century and find but one illustrious 
product of intellect, the philosophy of Abel- 


Christ’s Influence during “The Dark Ages’’ 139 

ard. In the thirteenth century we stand 
amid the ruins of the Catholic throne and 
church. The fourteenth century is marvel- 
ous as a birth room. Dante tells to the 
world his dream, Wycliffe translates the 
Bible, and the century ends with Chaucer, 
the patriarch of English literature. In the 
fifteenth century we find the Mohammedan 
armies flung back into the Orient. Na- 
tionalities are forming. Scotland, Eng- 
land, Germany, France are now distinct 
empires. John Huss attacks the Papacy, 
Joan of Arc gives to France its first breath 
of liberty, and nearly a thousand years have 
passed. 

But during these centuries of darkness 
caused by the degeneracy of the Latin 
Church, several events occurred which made 
room for the Reformation. First, was the 
downfall of Constantinople, which scat- 
tered civilization every whither. 

The soul of Constantinople was as beauti- 
ful as a desert spider, and as poisonous. It 
stood like a marble cross in the cemetery, 
a gold sculptured symbol of piety, marking 
the vestibule of death. The fault lay in the 
Church cathedraled within its walls. Upon 
that Apostolic face had grown a Judas 


140 Christ's Influence during “The Dark Ages” 

avariciousness, and it fronted the past. 
Shameless deeds blood-spotted the robes of 
Priest and Cardinal. The Monastery, 
though sumptuous with art, was haunted 
with crimes. Bribe-kissed money affixed 
the seal of the Vatican pardon. Monks, 
cowled like midnight, preached against 
progress and the rights of the people. The 
hierarchy grew like the cactus plant, leaf 
rooted to leaf, thorny-edged with kingly am- 
bitions. 

Suddenly, without warning, the air 
around the city’s gates began to lightning- 
flash with swords. The Turks had come. 
They were triply strong in hate, in will, in 
iron mail. They pressed the bloody sacra- 
ment of war to the painted lips of the har- 
lot metropolis. Each day chronicled new 
disasters. Their battering-rams almost 
shook the dead from their graves. Though 
they consented to the sneering courtesies of 
a truce, and listened to priestly oaths em- 
blazoned with pomp, they yielded nothing. 
That blood-sucking Mohammedan vampire 
clung to that city until it fell, and Constan- 
tinople, queen of the five senses, was slain. 
But, Constantinople was the treasure house 
of the world. Now from its broken walls 


Christ’s Influence during “ The Dark Ages!’ 141 

flew the cherubim of civilization; the clas- 
sics were disentombed; those open graves 
became universities; the arts of making 
paper and glass, the manufacture of cotton 
and leather, became divinities in commer- 
cial enterprises; the Damascus method of 
tempering steel was unchained from the 
dungeon secrecy ; the introduction of 
rhyme into metre attuned poetry with or- 
chestral majesty; navigation like a spear 
shattered the terrible shield of the ocean; 
finally the knotted hand of the serf became 
the skilled hand of the mechanic; — that 
skilled hand marbled Europe with temples 
of prayer and devotion. 

Then came the invention of gunpowder. 
Gunpowder folded battle thunder in the 
arm of the slave, and placed him upon a 
war-equality with the prince. He will 
never again kiss the foot of a throne. Then 
came the discovery of the printing press. 
The printing press made the serf, the intel- 
lectual equal of his priest. The newspaper 
is the university and theological seminary 
of the common people. 

Then another ray of light flashed out of 
this profound darkness. The Church un- 
consciously had gravitated all the inquiries 


142 Christ's Influence during “The Dark Ages/' 

of the mind toward theology. If men pon- 
dered the problems stated by Plato and 
Seneca, if men recast the philosophical sys- 
tems of Paganism, it was for the purpose of 
harmonizing them with Christian doctrine. 
Science began with a theological premise. 
Poetry thrilled its verse with theological 
dogmas. Architecture, sculpture, painting, 
and music were consecrated by the genius 
of the Church, to illustrate creeds. Every 
great department of thought had theology 
for its center, and theology for its circum- 
ference. In other words, the intellectual 
genius of Europe, under the prodigious in- 
fluence of the Church, became gradually em- 
ployed in the task of putting into the life 
of the individual, society and the state, the 
moral responsibility of living upon the high 
plane of Christ’s life, as well as intellect- 
ually grasping His thought. 

Equally momentous was the advent of 
Savonarola into Florence. 

In youth he determined to be a monk. 
Therefore he folded his passions like a sol- 
dier’s tent that he might take his place in 
the armies of God. That was well. The 
times demanded consecration of genius. 

Civilization was bruising her wings 


Christ’s Influence during “The Dark Ages.” 143 

against iron-barbed despotisms. The peo- 
ple were carrying about priestly-hushed 
consciences. The luxuries of the age had 
untempered the steel-clad modesty of the 
women. The mournful dirges of the chapel- 
singing Monks, were offset by the revels of 
a palace, where fortunes were drained in 
goblets of wine. The throne was sceptered 
by Lorenzo surrounded by a purple cloud of 
satellites, clowns, poets, scholars and 
painted harlots. 

Suddenly a half-starved monk entered the 
city. It was Savonarola ! 

Bewildered by the eloquence of this 
Dominican Monk, Lorenzo, patron of arts, 
invites this apparition to pulpit himself in 
Florence. 

Instantly, this cannon-mouthed monk 
burst into thunder. “ The Church shall be 
scourged and regenerated, and that quick- 
ly,” — this was the message, which like a 
curse fell upon Italy. 

Lorenzo was panic-stricken, for as if to 
fulfill the dread prophecy, outside the city 
gates appeared a battle-fingered King, in the 
midst of a wilderness of swords. 

The people gathered in Saint Mark’s 


144 Christ’s Influence during “The Dark Ages.” 

Church in penitential tears. Lorenzo went 
with them and applauded the Prophet, but 
his snake-like conscience crawling through 
the weeds of his heart, hissed with rage. 
Then he bethought himself with the sweet 
voice of diplomacy and the oiled fingers of 
flattery to smooth down the thunder clouds 
piled upon the prophet’s face; rank was 
offered the monk, with the red-robed car- 
dinals of Rome. 

“ No,” said Savonarola, “ for me is or- 
dained the red robe of martyrdom.” 

Seeing his end near he toiled like a sun 
builder. Government was unseated from 
the palace and shouldered in the voices of 
the people. With his naked feet he trod 
down thorns of social iniquities. Ruinous 
taxations were annulled. He laid legal re- 
straint upon every Florentine Shylock. He 
regenerated the courts of justice. He intro- 
duced far-reaching philanthropies. He 
purged the municipality of corruption : and 
all this without the flourish of a sword, with- 
out a riot in the streets, without wasting a 
drop of blood. His great heart was the 
cradle of future republics. He then openly 
arrayed himself against the aristocracies en- 
throned in Italy: the aristocracy of the 


Christ's Influence during “ The Dark Ages/' 145 

king, Lorenzo; the aristocracy of the priest, 
that monk yonder in the Vatican; the aris- 
tocracy of the classes, the nobles of Flor- 
ence. Well, what are these aristocracies go- 
ing to do about it? Either this man must 
die, or they must. There is no other alter- 
native. But it is easier for one to die, there- 
fore let it be Savonarola. They throttle him 
with a chain, and burn his body to ashes. 

Such, O Heaven, is the foolishness of 
earth’s princes, that they think they can roll 
back God’s chariot wheels, by kindling in 
the highway of the centuries, a human bon- 
fire! 

God reached down from the sky, took 
those charred ashes and flung them all over 
Europe. Wherever they fell, the earth 
shook. When the earth shakes, men pray. 
When men pray, they unyoke the tyrannies 
of the flesh and answer to the roll call of the 
skies for volunteers. From that hour, the 
Reformation soldiery grew from a feeble 
company into battalions. 

Therefore, in Martin Luther and the Re- 
formation, we see what? The Pope arrayed 
against an obscure monk, and the monk vic- 
torious? No! Luther was the hinge, hu- 
man liberty was the ponderous gate, and 


146 Christ's Influence during “The Dark Ages ” 

God swung it. In the Reformation the hu- 
man mind walked through that gate and 
wrote its immortal emancipation proclama- 
tion against all human authority, living or 
dead. It asserted its right to think, regard- 
less of creeds and systems. It asserted its 
sovereignty to judge of facts, regardless of 
opinions and theology. It asserted its pre- 
rogative to investigate man, to investigate 
the nature of the universe, to speculate upon 
the nature of God, unfettered by tradition. 
The Protestant Reformation was not simply 
a demand for reform, as the word “ Refor- 
mation ” implies ; it was the plea of the hu- 
man mind and conscience for freedom, and 
from that hour liberty became the new dyna- 
mic in politics. It rocked the cradle of 
science. It was the advocate of universal 
education. It replaced the authority of 
king-craft, priest-craft and class-craft, with 
that magnificent substitute, the right of pri- 
vate judgment. 

A legend says, a Celtic wizard by the 
name of Merlin, made a palace for King Ar- 
thur grow out of the ground by playing upon 
the spot some exquisite music. We some- 
times think it is the law-maker, the poli- 
tician, the newspaper editor who are build- 


Christ's Influence during “The Dark Ages.” 147 

ing the beauteous fabric called “ modern 
civilization.” But the real masons, carpen- 
ters and sculptors are the holy influences 
creeping out of prayer meetings, Sabbath 
schools and Churches, where God’s spirit 
plays upon the chords of human nature. So 
it was in the Dark Ages. 

The hour was marked by a forward move- 
ment of human endeavor. Masterpieces of 
sculpture were brought from the cities of 
the Mediterranean Sea. The classics, ora- 
tions and poems by the stalwart Greek and 
Roman masters were scattered over Europe. 
Out of this quickened intellectual life came 
Platonic-browed men like Erasmus, a 
scholar who seemed to know the content of 
universal truth. Painting stretched new 
canvas under the brush of Raphael. The 
organ took the place of the harp. The dis- 
covery of the magnetic compass was a Beth- 
lehem star for Columbus. But above all, a 
religious revival took place. Art was col- 
ored by religious sentiment. The discover- 
ers executed the Church’s dream of planting 
religion in distant places. Scholarship was 
engaged in reconciling the quarrel between 
philosophy and religion. Science had for its 
task the establishment of God as Creator 


148 Christ's Influence during “ The Dark Ages ” 

and Upholder of the universe. Universities 
grew from sparks into stars. 

The Dark Ages present to us the human 
mind in subjection, the intellect of man op- 
posed by tradition, the scepter and the dun- 
geon. But what was the result? Was free 
inquiry stifled? Was the spirit of investi- 
gation un winged? Did the Church with all 
its ponderous machinery of ecclesiastical 
authority, reinforced by the steel arm of the 
state, succeed in making the human brain a 
slave? Just the reverse was true. The 
genius of Christianity, born of the free spirit 
of Christ, reasserted its lofty dignity. It 
lifted reason again to its throne, replaced 
the seraph’s trumpet to the lips of con- 
science, and the human mind stretched upon 
the rack, tied at the stake, imprisoned 
in the dungeon, asserted a strength that 
quenched the fire, shattered the chain, crum- 
bled the scepter, and, bursting forth into 
new inquiries, new investigations in science, 
philosophy and theology, the modern world 
was born. 

But gigantic as were the minds of the 
fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centur- 
ies, equally astounding, is that group be- 
yond them. They belong to the future. 


Christ’s Influence during “The Dark Ages ” 149 

Therefore, are their faces veiled in darkness. 
Therefore do they whisper softly, that no 
man can hear. But when the hour strikes, 
each will rush out of eternity, and, un- 
winged, garbed like a man, will stride the 
world with angel tread, to smite the evils of 
the times, or to replenish the soul of civili- 
zation with immortal youth. That is the 
standing miracle of history. A new occa- 
sion is born, and great souls are born in the 
same hour. That is why the wheels of pro- 
gress are never ditched. If one charioteer 
falls, another is ready to grasp the lines. 
When more light is needed to blaze the path 
of reform, God wraps an angel in flesh and 
blood and hurls him from the sky to earth. 

Never has civilization, like the mother of 
Christ, stood weeping over the martyrdom 
of her only-begotten, but a mysterious voice 
speaks, — “ Behold thy Son,” and lo, stand- 
ing by her side is another epoch-mak- 
ing man, armed and ready to finish what the 
first began. Look at the world’s map for 
proof. Suppose the Emperor had yielded 
to the temptation and given Luther to the 
flames, would the Reformation, too, have 
perished at the stake? Do you see that man 
crouched in the shadow of the Alps? That 


150 Christ’s Influence during “The Dark Ages.” 

is Zwingli! Look into France. That uni- 
versity student is John Calvin! Turn to- 
ward England. Latimer, Ridley and Cran- 
mer are getting ready to become swords of 
fire! Now turn your gaze into Scotland! 
That babe in the cradle is John Knox! 

That is the secret of God. Never has hu- 
manity lost His friendship. When the new 
age comes, He ordains men to keep it alive. 
Does the age demand a kingly spirit? There 
is Charlemagne! Is a priestly warrior re- 
quired to upheave the times? Then comes 
Peter the Hermit! Is it scholarship? Then 
Melancthon is ready to reinforce Luther! 
Are the people hungry for a poet’s music? 
Tasso begins to sing. If a reformation is 
kindled and bodies are needed to be burned 
to make the conflagration fill the earth with 
glory, God has anointed ones ready to serve 
as wood. Huss, Savonarola, Joan of Arc, 
Tyndale, Cranmer, of whom the world was 
not worthy, stand waiting with smiling lips, 
each in turn to become a living torch that 
humanity may see the path which will lead 
out of the night of the Dark Ages. 

Now look backward! 

The sixteenth century unfolded three 
colossal men. Columbus, the Christian, a 


Christ's Influence during “ The Dark Ages." 151 

new world at his feet, vindicating the 
majesty of a private opinion in science. 
There stands that splendid-souled monk, 
Savonarola, vindicating the majesty of a 
private opinion in politics. And there, a step 
in advance, rises the priestly form of Luther, 
vindicating the majesty of a private opinion 
in religion. These three made the seven- 
teenth century possible. It opens with 
Shakespeare, thrilling the harp of English 
speech with the music of the spheres. Gali- 
leo strides before us, his brow ablaze with 
newly-discovered constellations. Lord Bacon 
becomes the harbinger of modern science. 
Cardinal Richelieu is now political master 
of France, Cromwell of England, and Peter 
the Great of Russia. Milton plans his im- 
mortal epic, Rubens is crowned king of art, 
Dryden, poet-laureate, John Locke, the pro- 
phet of a new philosophy, and the century 
ends its life with Sir Isaac Newton in the 
mid-noon of his career. Then the eighteenth 
century, with John Wesley for its divine 
evangel, brings the spirit of Christianity to 
America. 

And what more? When the Reformation 
swept the shadow of the Spanish flag from 
Europe, Germany kindled every forest tree 


152 Christ’s Influence during “The Dark Ages ” 

into a torch of civilization. Austria fell from 
the saddle of kingship, and became a ser- 
vant. Prussia built into her schools the 
brain of Athens. France offered herself a 
battle-ground for political experiments. 
England signed the Magna Carta which 
made her eagle kings moult their feathers 
into a parliament of peers. Sweden, Den- 
mark, the Netherlands, from their pulpits of 
snow, preached the springtime of equal 
rights, while Poland vindicated her loyalty 
to the political renaissance by national mar- 
tyrdom. 

What nations refused the light? Russia, 
Spain, Portugal, Italy ! And what has been 
their destiny? Russia is now like an un- 
calendared day in which snow and sunshine 
struggle for the mastery. Spain’s voice has 
shrunken to a serpent’s hiss; it doubtless 
hath music in it, but who can bear it? Italy 
has as many eyes as are pictured in a pea- 
cock’s plumage, but they see nothing. And 
look at Portugal, her hands bandaged with 
idleness, her cheek pinched with famine. 
You might as well try to kindle sparks from 
a quagmire as to blaze ideals from the brain 
of Portugal. Only now, after four hundred 


Christ’s Influence during “The Dark Ages.” 153 

years does it show signs of being worthy 
to tent itself in this century. 

These four kingdoms haughtily refused 
the gifts of the sixteenth century, and to- 
day they painfully limp, a thousand years 
behind the bugles and drums of progress. 
Meanwhile the victories of the liberated 
mind increased in political achievements. 
Through John Locke, England put the mak- 
ing of laws and their execution into different 
hands, which ultimately led to the revolu- 
tionary conclusion, that taxation without 
representation was tyranny. From Calvin 
came the superb dogma, enshrining the voice 
of the people with sceptered dignities. 
Montesquieu, in France, gathered from the 
teachings of history the splendid tidings, 
that a throne must echo the demands of the 
masses. Rousseau followed with a social 
contract, the declaration that society is a so- 
cial unit, a moral personality, the only di- 
vine sovereignty. From the gates of these 
doctrines burst the French Revolution, 
shrinking her kings into bats, and giving to 
the word “ Citizen,” imperial potency. 

In the light of these facts, shall we say 
the Reformation was an accident? Were 


154 Christ's Influence during “The Dark Ages.” 

Tasso, Shakespeare, Galileo accidents? Did 
accident produce Rubens, Cervantes and the 
printing press? Did accident unfold 
Luther, Copernicus, Calvin and Wesley? 
Was the age of Elizabeth an accident? The 
destruction of the Spanish Armada, was 
that an accident? Did accident call back the 
sciences to life, replenish literature out of 
the fall of Constantinople, arouse the spirit 
of art to loftier achievement, usher in the 
reformations and revolutions of Germany, 
France and England? Did accident termi- 
nate the dark ages? Did accident discover 
America? 

In the New Testament are three sen- 
tences : 

First, “ Render unto Caesar the things 
which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things 
which are God’s.” That proved the king 
was not divine. 

Second, “ Ye shall know the truth, and 
the truth shall make you free.” That proved 
the priest was not divine. 

Third, “ God can of these stones raise up 
children unto Abraham.” That proved the 
classes, an aristocracy of blood, were not 
divine. 

Plato and Seneca both declared, that if a 


Christ's Influence during “The Dark Ages " 155 

man worked with his hands, he was a slave. 
Christ, as a carpenter, proved that labor was 
divine with dignity. 

Europe during the Reformation, waged 
war against the divine rights of kings and 
priests. 

In the war of the American Revolution, 
and the Civil War, were vindicated the di- 
vine rights of the individual. 

The American mechanic, with a ballot in 
his hands, is the political apotheosis of all 
the centuries, since Christ, the carpenter, 
walked the earth. 

Skepticism is challenged to duplicate this 
vision in the annals of the world. 

Call now the roll of the world’s great em- 
pires, and let each bring forward as tribute 
to the twentieth century, its richest achieve- 
ment. China would come, the pallor of 
death upon her cheek, and bring forward 
the wisdom of Confucius. Africa would un- 
roll the splendor of Egypt. Greece offers 
poets, patriots and statesmen, who never 
can be forgotten. Italy points to Cicero and 
Raphael, a multitude of illustrious sons. 
France claims Napoleon, the greatest of sol- 
dier statesmen. Germany boasts reforma- 
tions and philosophies, making eulogy a 


156 Christ's Influence during “The Dark Ages ” 

mockery. England brings Westminster 
Abbey, rich with the ashes of princes and 
men of genius. 

Then comes America. America has never 
produced the equal of a Plato, nor of a Con- 
fucius, nor will her achievements in schol- 
arship, art and science, equal the achieve- 
ments of the old world. Why then does 
America claim front rank with those illus- 
trious empires? Simply because of an hum- 
ble political incident which occurred a few 
years ago. The President of the United 
States went to the polls of his native city, 
and cast there his ballot. An humble 
mechanic, with a dinner bucket in one hand, 
and a ballot in the other, came immediately 
behind the President, and cast his ballot. 
But this mechanic happened to belong to the 
opposite political party; therefore, accord- 
ing to the genius of our institutions, insti- 
tutions born in that Bethlehem manger, 
cradled upon battlefields, baptized with the 
sacrificial blood of countless martyrs, these 
institutions folded in the ballot of the 
mechanic, gave him such royal rights as a 
citizen, that his vote annulled the ballot of 
the President of the United States. 

That was all ! 


Christ's Influence during “The Dark Ages” 157 

The old world empires may rise now and 
sneer at this insignificant trifle. They may 
point to the weakness of our standing 
armies, our feeble attempts at architecture, 
the poverty of our literature, and even claim 
that our political institutions are only an 
experiment. But here and now, we behold in 
this simple incident, the decay of thrones 
and tyrannies of nearly two hundred gener- 
ations. It realizes the hopes and dreams of 
the world’s scepter-crushed millions. At last 
the humblest mechanic that walks our 
streets, protected by the Stars and Stripes, 
equals in ballot-power, the President of the 
greatest republic — upon this planet. 

A misapprehension of Christ’s teachings 
caused the dark ages . A profounder spir- 
itual vision of Christ created the Reforma- 
tion, and the modern world. Skepticism is 
challenged to name one or a group of 
skeptics, who so divinely ever influenced 
humanity . 


CHAPTER VII. 


THE SKEPTIC’S DILEMMA; ANALYSIS OF THE 
GOSPELS. 

If asked to name the proofs of a divine 
nature, what would we demand? 

First: That His coming shall be pro- 
phesied! Behold the heralding voices of 
seers and prophetic events. 

Second : That His advent shall be a mar- 
vel in method and circumstance. There is 
the Virgin mother, the mysterious star, and 
an organ loft in the sky filled with angels. 

Third: That His wisdom, although hu- 
man so that we may understand, shall tran- 
scend the speculations of the schools. Hear 
the confession of universal scholarship, 
“ Never man spake as this Man.” 

Fourth: We shall demand that His ori- 
gin, if heavenly, shall be glorified with cor- 
responding works. The miracles harmonize 
with His character and claims. Not one is 
discordant. 

Fifth : We shall expect Divinity to live a 
life of incarnate holiness. The challenge of 
Christ remains unimpeached; He says, 
“ Which of you convicteth me of sin? ” 


Analysis of the Four Gospels. 159 

Sixth : We shall insist that if a divine per- 
sonality appears, the universal triumphs of 
death shall cease at His command. 

The burden of proof lies upon the Uni- 
tarian and skeptic. Christ’s resurrection is 
not to be simply denied, not argued against, 
not impeached by impudent scientists and 
mocked at in some half-fledged school rooms, 
called universities. It must be disproved . 

The supernatural element in the Gospels 
is attested in that, each Gospel writer de- 
scribes a Christ individual to that Gospel. 
There seem to be four personalities, under 
one veil of human nature. 

Take for example Matthew’s Gospel. It 
is distinctively a description of a Jewish 
Messiah. He closes a thousand years of 
prophecy with this recessional, — “ It is ful- 
filled.” In the background are the prophets. 
In the foreground is Christ. Israel is wrap- 
ped in slumber. Matthew sees the night of 
the Jewish past beautifully softening down 
in color, a conscious yielding before a pres- 
ence felt, but scarcely seen. The horizons 
of Messianic hopes gradually upbuild them- 
selves out of the night. The stars of cere- 
monials cast their shining crowns before a 
regal presence, then silently vanish one by 


160 


The Skeptic's Dilemma; 


one, but no eye can detect their going. The 
Mosaic altar, like the East, gorgeous in 
stormy robes, foreheralds the mystery of the 
cross. In the temple the cloud of incense, 
long and slender as a trumpet, is lifted ; but 
whatever the music, it is not for earth’s list- 
ening. Matthew saw in the past holy days, 
like priests, a golden multitude procession- 
ing the highways of the times, while pro- 
phetic voices from the great beyond gave 
warning of a miraculous advent. 

Matthew beheld in Christ a new dispensa- 
tion. The Jew knelt at Sinai. Humanity 
shall kneel at Golgotha. The Decalogue is 
a mountain of fire. The Beatitudes are hills 
of healing. The priests and Pharisees stand 
at the ancient altar, an altar still bloody 
with sacrifice. Matthew cries — “ Behold 
the true lamb of God.” To Matthew, Christ 
was the interpretation of every ceremonial, 
the love spirit written in the law, the tem- 
ple incarnate, and, because of the blood of 
Abraham, the rightful heir to David’s 
throne. 

Take the miracle of the healing of the 
leper. Here Matthew inshrines the spirit of 
Christianity. The Jewish attitude toward 
the leper was, — “ Let him stand outside the 


Analysis of the Four Gospels . 161 

city’s gates, shrouded like the dead and cry, 
— ‘ Unclean, unclean!’ ” Moreover, Judaism 
gazed upon the Gentile world as a leper. 
Judaism offered this leper, law, ceremonial, 
ritual, but not divine pardon. It must die. 
Christ touched the leper. That is the genius 
of Christianity. It is not philosophy, not 
sermons, not colleges, but the personal touch 
that will save humanity. In all the philo- 
sophies and religions of the world there was 
no room for the leper. But the leper can be 
cured. This is the affirmation of Christian- 
ity that contradicted the religions of the 
world. A divine touch means a divine life. 
If in marble glorious forms are possible, so 
in human nature, however vile, the angel life 
is potentially there. Poverty, disease, vice, 
degradation, these are rags. It is this view 
of humanity that is electrifying reforms to- 
day. Savagery is moral leprosy. Therefore, 
foreign missions have become the winged 
horse of American Christianity. 

The Gospel of Mark is addressed to the 
Koman mind. Matthew faced the past. He 
stood upon the banks and watched the surge 
of the rivers of prophecy. The Jewish tem- 
ple seemed covered with wings and flying 
hitherward. Ceremonials had risen from 


162 


The Skeptic's Dilemma; 


their lethargy and stood like statues awak- 
ening. The past of Israel was like a dream. 
Matthew beheld in Christ its interpreta- 
tion. 

Mark’s Gospel speaks of Christ in the 
present tense. The Roman empire had no 
backward look. Jupiter, the Roman divin- 
ity, was a capricious half man and god. 
Mark points to Christ and says — “ Behold 
the Son of God.” Nero wrestled in the 
amphitheatre, because the garland won there 
outshone the dull majesty of a Caesar. In 
Mark’s Gospel, Christ’s actions are gladia- 
torial. Rome was not a nation filled with 
theorists. Her armies were always on the 
march. Mark makes the days of Christ’s 
life swift-moving as battle chariots. The 
Romans were a victorious people. Mark 
portrays Christ as, “ The Lion of the Tribe 
of Judah.” Each year the boundaries of the 
empire were being enlarged by the bringing 
of new tribes into subjection. Mark turns 
to Rome, its eyes eager with the vision for 
world empire, and cries, — “ Behold the 
new Kingdom!” Caesar’s word was final. 
Mark clothes the words of Christ with 
kingly majesty. 

Rome believed that man was made for the 


Analysis of the Four Gospels. 163 

state. It is Mark who echoes Christ’s great 
utterance, — “ The Sabbath was made for 
man, not man for the Sabbath.” This means 
that man is the Sabbath of God. The Gen- 
esis record says, He rested after making 
man. Trade, culture, religion, government, 
these things are scaffolds and therefore 
holy, because they were made to rebuild 
man. They were made for him, he was not 
made for them. 

Humanity was like a sea storm-swept. 
Upon the shore stood philosophers, dream- 
ers, poets, statesmen, warriors, but all were 
powerless. Mark heard Christ, through the 
boisterous waves of a storm, say to human- 
ity, the state, the individual, — “ Peace, be 
still.” To the Roman mind, loving imperial- 
ism, Mark portrays Christ as the one de- 
scribed by Isaiah, — “ The government shall 
be upon his shoulder.” 

Luke’s Gospel is addressed to the cul- 
tured mind. To the Greeks this Gospel 
would have resistless meaning. There is 
something about the Greek spirit that is uni- 
versal. Its sculpture, its poetry, its philoso- 
phy, belong to the centuries. Hence, Luke 
paints Christ as the universal man. Mat- 
thew relates Christ to Abraham, but Luke 


164 


The Skeptic's Dilemma ; 


goes back to Adam, the first man. Human- 
ity has fallen. Luke portrays Christ as the 
new Adam, come “ to seek and save that 
which was lost.” Christ, the universal man, 
is therefore the universal Saviour. Luke’s 
Gospel is the inspiration of foreign mission- 
ary movements. 

The Greek also glorified woman in art. 
But it was the weakness of Greek civiliza- 
tion not to understand woman, nor the solu- 
tion of her problems. Luke describes 
Christ’s attitude toward woman, which 
stands in perfect harmony with the story of 
Eden, — “ This is now bone of my bones and 
flesh of my flesh,” floats from Adam’s lips. 
Christ said of marriage — “ They twain shall 
be one flesh.” Marvelous words! It seems 
as if the Master stood again in Eden and 
caught the benediction breathed from the 
heart of Adam, as he gazed upon the woman. 

The Garden of Eden! 

There Adam lies. Creation’s mysterious 
touch hath lulled each sense with sleep. 

There lies humanity incarnate, a spirit 
veiled in mortal flesh, one whose imperial 
graces do culminate in that, that he is man. 

Youth is visioned in that form, and yet 


Analysis of the Four Gospels . 165 

the dignity of years seems sculptured there, 
the calm and strength of age. 

A crimson halo tints each cheek. 

’Tis from within, where life the sun is 
orbited, and wide through the firmament of 
flesh it glows, splendoring far, until the 
senses and nerves, like hills, are purpled 
with the dawn. 

Each breath that swells the veins with 
richer blood, the well-poised lip, the delicate 
tapestries of the eyes low swung, the brow, 
whose ivory throne awaits the rulership of 
kingly thoughts, all these proclaim a sov- 
ereignty that can bow the knee to none save 
God and her ordained to be his queen. 

And there she stands, a marble statue 
breathing. How like and yet unlike yon 
mortal couched in dreams. 

How reads the record of her birth? 

Not from dust she rose. But when clay 
was rounded, pulsed with life, when immor- 
tality had set its seal thereon, thence was 
she enshrined, a new creation. 

Her countenance, the rose and lily in 
beauteous rivalry hath claimed. Upon the 
scarlet-threaded lip, a smile hath victoried 
and illumes the horizon of her face; and 


166 


The Skeptic's Dilemma ; 


when she speaks, it doth appear that some 
celestial minstrel did lose his harp and left 
its music in her voice. 

Behind the burning altars of her eyes 
priestly virtues kneel, ordained for earth- 
wide ministry. 

Her heart love-sceptered is, which glori- 
fies in rich enchantment, gesture, eye and 
speech, while the maiden brow, the blush of 
Eastern skies doth duplicate, the morning’s 
crimson, rose and gold, fair nature’s bridal 
wreath and diadem, for earth’s divinity, 
woman, wife and queen. 

That marriage is a thrice holy thing. 
Within the woods’ cathedral, arched with 
memories sweet and dim, no censers swing, 
rich with perfumed incense ; no acolytes and 
white-robed priests within the chancel 
kneel; no organ melodies mingle soft with 
choir music to voice in solemn hymn the 
costly and triumphant sacrifice of life con- 
senting to life. 

The bridal pair is in God’s fingers, the 
holy instrument of creation’s mystery. The 
home is Paradise, a realm of innocence 
where love’s seraphs sing, and in whose ves- 
tibule, thrilled with unseen wings, the 
Eternal one doth linger still, breathing 


Analysis of the Four Gospels. 


167 


Christ’s benediction — “ They twain shall be 
one flesh.” 

Shakespeare haunted the cities of Asia for 
a divine type of womanhood and found none. 
He found only Cleopatra, that beautiful asp, 
coiled upon the throne of the Ptolemies. 

The Orient contained nothing but men. 
Why? Because the sculptured personality 
of woman was shattered by the iron hand of 
caste into fragments. Her soul was like the 
sky at dusk, starless of great hopes. Her 
honor was blackened by enforced marriage. 
She grew up a weed in the shadow of man. 
She was not the Priestess of the home, only 
its despised instrument. She was not the 
white brow of society, but its leathern-san- 
daled foot. She was not the noonday of the 
state, but its night. In religion, the priest 
did give her rank with toads and creeping 
things birthed in jungles. O American 
women, forget not this: You were in Asia 
despised, rejected, a creature of sorrows, and 
acquainted with grief. Then Christ came. 
He loosed the chains of Oriental custom. He 
lifted the veil from your face and said, “ Be 
not ashamed.” He opened the gates of cul- 
ture wide, and let you trail your robes 
through schools and college halls. He gave 


168 


The Skeptics Dilemma ; 


you wings beneath whose shining the home 
rebuilt itself. He gave you social rights and 
queenly dignities, and forged the State into 
a brazen shield for your defense. Asia was 
your prison house, the hand of Christ did 
set you free. 

It is Luke’s description of Christ’s courtly 
and delicate graciousness toward women 
that made the word “ woman ” flower forth 
into that word, “Womanhood.” 

Ask the modern scientist, what about hu- 
manity? He looks upon the huge tree, the 
strong beast, and says it is a matter of the 
survival of the fittest. He says that the de- 
cayed tree, the sick brute, the half-crushed 
creature, must go under. So it is in the phy- 
sical world, so it is in the life of man. The 
Greeks said the same thing. They said only 
the strong and the civilized can survive; 
therefore, the poets, sages, scientists and 
statesmen labored to enrich the best ele- 
ments of society in the struggle for exist- 
ence. What of the criminals, the paupers, 
the corrupt and degenerate hordes in the 
whirlpools of the cities? The Sages said 
they must go under. Think what a funeral 
knell this was to the drunkard, the criminal, 


Analysis of the Four Gospels . 


169 


the harlot and the lost. It was taught them 
it was only a matter of time when they must 
be ground into bloody clods under the leaden 
wheels of civilization. 

Luke echoes Christ’s overwhelming re- 
buke. He said that He had come to be a 
Saviour of the helpless, the lost and the 
abandoned. He said that it was possible for 
the corrupt to put on incorruption, for the 
degraded to be made pure. He said — “ I 
am come to seek and to save that which was 
lost ” No moralist in the world ever declared 
such a thing. Christ stands alone to-day, 
among the worldlings, the moralists, the 
political economists, and the statesmen. He 
alone says there is rescue possible for Africa. 
There is a to-morrow for Asia. There is 
hope for every man, woman and child, no 
difference how sinful. Jesus Christ is walk- 
ing across these centuries alone, lifting 
races, continents and generations into right- 
eousness. 

The Greeks developed the fine arts. Luke’s 
Gospel immortalizes them. It has been, for 
the ages since, the food and drink of Chris- 
tian architecture, painting, and sculpture. 
Behind the church music of twenty centur- 


170 


The Skeptic's Dilemma ; 


ies stands Luke’s narrative of Mary’s song 
of triumph. That song is also the Madonna 
Mother of Christian poetry. 

Matthew described Christ as the Messiah. 
Mark said He was the Son of God. Luke 
said He was the Son of Man. John is the 
primitive Beethoven. He portrays not 
Christ in history, but Christ the soul of his- 
tory. John’s Gospel and apocalyptic vis- 
ions are an hundred symphonies rolled into 
a prolonged peal of thunder. He compresses 
the moral history of the ages into an hour. 
He concentrates the prophecies of the world 
into the utterance : “ The Word was made 
flesh.” What man can climb the altitudes 
of that affirmation? Oceans lift their tides 
within its shores. It is a midnight sky 
blending with a firmament glorified with 
noon. 

Within the prologue of John’s Gospel, cen- 
turies of poets, prophets and priests stand 
with folded arms. In that prologue, the 
Orient, the Occident, and Judaism clasp 
hands. It is a mountain of transfiguration, 
and in the glory stand Buddha, Moses, Plato, 
and One whose garments shine as light. It is 
John who tells us this. Leaving the dull 
plains of earth, he ranged up and down the 


Analysis of the Four Gospels. 


171 


cathedral aisles of eternity. He fell pros- 
trate amid adoring cherubim. He beheld the 
flash of wings, the spectral forms of spirits 
clothed in immortal beauty. He talked with 
angels, gazed on mysteries too vast for mor- 
tal speech, measured the heights and depths 
of love, listened to voices, raptures and har- 
monies, that almost unseated his soul from 
its earthly tabernacle; then, as he descends 
to earth, the secret of God falls from his lips, 
— “ The Word was made flesh and dwelt 
among us.” 

“ The Word,” God’s thought, His will, His 
purpose, swathed in mortality. This is 
John’s message, the theme and key to his 
Gospel. John deals with the Christ life from 
the viewpoint of the seer, the poet, the 
scholar, the mystic, and the theologian. His 
records of Christ’s words are not the para- 
bles upon the street to the common people, 
but the private teachings to His disciples. 
Therefore, they are more spiritual and more 
profound. Christ reveals to them the deep 
things of God. Other writers tell us of 
Christ’s earthly career. John was the be- 
loved disciple. His head once lay upon the 
Master’s bosom. In John’s Gospel we hear 
the beatings of the Infinite Heart. The other 


172 


The Skeptic's Dilemma ; 


writers tell what Christ said and what He 
did. John describes the soul life of Christ. 
The great scholars, the great philosophers 
of Asia and of the world, find in John’s Gos- 
pel that which satisfies the loftiest intellec- 
tual needs of man, wffiile the mystics, the 
saints, the devout ones of earth, have found 
in that Gospel that w T hich satisfies the spir- 
itual hunger of the human soul. 

The Mosaic record states — “ In the begin- 
ning God created.” Moses starts from the 
creation of the universe and strides forward 
to the creation of man. John, like an arch- 
angel in the midst of the eternities, pro- 
claims the most mysterious sentence that 
ever illuminated the ages — “ In the begin- 
ning was the Word.” Moses and the pro- 
phets saw God related by a covenant to the 
Jewish race, through Abraham. It is in 
John’s Gospel we find that all-encircling 
arch — “ God so loved the world.” Tribes, 
races, centuries are all included in the cir- 
cumference of the divine affection. John 
says — “ In Him was life, and the life was 
the light of men.” This affirms that the re- 
ligions of the world have their truths cen- 
tered in Christ. 

“ The light shineth in darkness and the 


Analysis of the Four Gospels. 


173 


darkness apprehendetli it not.” Here in 
vast outline is mapped the heathen world. 
Under the sway of evil, the world was in a 
moral eclipse. “ He came unto His own and 
His own received Him not.” In eleven 
words is the tragical history of Israel. “ But 
to all who received Him, to them He gave 
the power of becoming the sons of God.” 
The last twenty centuries bear witness of 
the fulfillment of that prophecy. He whom 
the Jewish Priests crucified is now the light 
and life of the Gentile nations. 

Matthew’s description outlined the Jew- 
ish Messiah. Mark’s description of Christ, 
as the Son of God, is a vision of triumphant 
power which would appeal to the Roman 
genius. Luke with his poetry, his fine artis- 
tic sense, his aesthetic values, naturally 
would allure the art-loving Greek. John, 
who describes for us the soul life of Christ, 
satisfies the most spiritual needs of the hum- 
blest peasant and bewilders the proudest 
skeptic; John, whose Gospel is the founda- 
tion of theology and of modern philosophy; 
— a Gospel which portrays Christ so close to 
humanity that the slave’s hand, clanking a 
chain, can touch Him; in the next breath 
he describes a glorified Christ, the heart of 


174 


The Skeptic's Dilemma ; 


God Himself, unfolding an analysis reaching 
so deep into the eternities that our man- 
made universities, piled one upon the other, 
like the stones of the Tower of Babel, are so 
pitiful in their failure to touch the Christ 
of the skies, that their builders seem pos- 
sessed of only one gift, — the confusion of 
tongues. 


CHAPTER VIII. 


Part I. 

THE SKEPTIC^ DILEMMA; THE MYSTERIOUS 
PERSONALITY OF CHRIST. 

Let us now gaze upon Christ Himself. At 
once we are baffled. He is inscrutable. All 
we learn of His personality, we must gather 
from His speech. No key unlocks Himself 
but Himself. Those who wrote the Gospels 
offered no personal theories concerning Him. 
Who He was, what He was, is answered 
by some utterance from His lips. 

But, inclusive as He is, Jesus Christ ex- 
cludes all types of men. He differs from 
men, not simply in degree. It is not forgot- 
ten that He said of Himself, — “ I am the 
Son of Man.” But who will presume to ex- 
plain what He meant when He said that? 
To affirm that He meant to acknowledge 
that He had the limitations of man is not in 
harmony with the facts. A man is the in- 
carnation of one virtue, or fragments of 
many; but Jesus Christ is the incarnation of 
all the virtues known to humanity, plus! 
The virtues in a man’s life are of unequal 


176 


The Skeptic's Dilemma ; 


rank ; like April days, some are more gentle 
than others. But the virtues in Christ’s life 
are like the gates of heaven, of equal splen- 
dor. It is impossible to lay a finger upon 
several transcendent virtues, or even one, 
that dominates the others. There are times 
and circumstances in a man’s life when cer- 
tain virtues are in an eclipse. But when we 
see Christ talking to the woman at the well 
of Jacob, or in the transfiguration scene, or 
upon Golgotha, there is no ranking differ- 
ence in the virtues that adorn His person- 
ality. 

The virtues are revealed upon every occa- 
sion, sublime or insignificant. No event is 
too commonplace for their united majesty. 
In His death hour, every virtue known to 
man, and virtues until then unknown, sud- 
denly flame up from the cross in the midst 
of the darkness and earthquake. 

Let us probe deeper. In His personality 
there are no habits. Neither have any 
habits been pruned away. It was said, “ He 
grew in grace and wisdom. ’’Apply that to a 
man; it means he outgrew some old habits. 
Use your microscope; you will find no ruins 
of bad habits in Christ’s character. His 
moral earnestness is always at white heat, 


The Mysterious Personality of Christ 177 

whether in defeat or triumph. Circum- 
stances leave no fingerprint upon His con- 
duct. The most splendid opportunity does 
not quicken a pulse beat. The most dread- 
ful misfortune does not loosen a fibre. The 
glorious confession of Peter, the treason kiss 
of Judas, leave Him undisturbed. His in- 
spiration dwells within Himself, and like the 
ocean, it never swells and never shrinks. 
Amid excited thousands, He alone is calm. 
He is never timid, diffident, excited, nervous, 
frightened or hesitant. He is always at His 
best. He never falls back upon the lessons 
of experience. Yet He is never betrayed into 
an error of judgment. He is never guilty of 
an hallucination. He never exaggerates. He 
never poses. He is never dramatic. He 
never acts to His own advantage. He is not 
diplomatic. He exposes every motive with 
every act. He exhibits no shrewdness. 
Popularity never hurries a footstep, antag- 
onism never falters a purpose. When oth- 
ers are sad, He has some secret source of 
joy. Then, when there is apparently no 
occasion, He is suddenly swept into tears. 

We know something about Happiness. He 
is never “ happy,” as we understand that 
word. Only after years of discipline, cul- 


178 


The Skeptic's Dilemma ; 


ture, and Christian experience, may we at- 
tain for a few moments that religious ecs- 
tasy known as “joy.” He lived in that 
realm every day, and without apparent 
effort. 

He discovered nothing. He advocated 
the claims of no party, sect or creed. He 
said nothing about the social and political 
evils of His times. He was not a reformer, 
He was not an iconoclast, a revolutionist, an 
agitator, or a liberator. When asked to do 
something to relieve the tyrannies of the 
hour, He uttered this enigmatical sentence : 
“ And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men 
unto me.” What He meant, even the disci- 
ples did not know. Swords, philosophies, 
kings, creeds, rituals, the plans of states- 
men, He looked upon as marble dust. 

While insisting upon His kingship, He 
does it without pride. In His transfigura- 
tion hour there is no trace of vanity. He 
continually speaks of “ My hour,” as though 
it were the culmination of past centuries; 
but there is no egotism. He rebukes Peter 
for drawing a sword. Did He rebuke the 
sword? He did not ask Caesar’s soldiers to 
lay theirs down. He is confidential to a 
beggar and strangely silent before Pilate. 


The Mysterious Personality of Christ 179 

He is so lovable that He allures children to 
His knee, but when speaking to His own 
mother, He always addresses her with that 
icy term, “ Woman ! ” 

When He speaks He reserves nothing. 
Whatever He thinks He says, regardless of 
consequences. Fragments are always im- 
perfect. The Gospel narratives are frag- 
ments, but the Christ-life therein revealed is 
perfect. We cannot imagine a word or ac- 
tion that could have been added that would 
have been to His advantage. He preached 
many sermons, He did many things of which 
there is no record. There are whole months 
lacking in His biography, yet the circle is 
complete. He so folds Himself into the 
smallest act, or incidental sentence, that we 
need scarcely any others for His portrait. 
Chisels, the painter’s brush, music, architec- 
ture, and millions of eulogies have immor- 
talized His every word and deed; yet there 
is a feeling in this century that Jesus Christ 
is just beginning to be known. 

He displays no partiality. He scourges 
the Pharisees and His disciples in the same 
breath. He is just to every man, He flatters 
none. Arrogance never moulds His voice. 
Ambition does not enlarge His plans. His 


180 


The Skeptics Dilemma ; 


philanthropy is tendered with the humility 
and grace of one who receives rather than 
one who gives. He gives men His advice; 
He always instructs them what to do. He 
never solicits the advice of His disciples. 
When they tender it He does not accept it. 
While He counsels no one, He never plans 
wrong. He was never discouraged. He 
was never despondent. 

He used no human ideals in His personal 
development. He never carelessly wastes 
an hour ; nor does an opportunity, a circum- 
stance, or a friendship leave Him richer or 
poorer. With increasing years of wisdom 
and of experience, men modify their think- 
ing. What Jesus said stands without revis- 
ion or improvement. He modified nothing, 
and we cannot. To try to mould or restate 
one of His principles to suit our times, 
would be like trying to modify the law of 
gravitation. 


Part II. 


THE SKEPTIC'S DILEMMA; THE MYSTERIOUS 
CONTRADICTIONS IN HIS LIFE. 

He was like nature, a blending of myster- 
ious contradictions. An egg unfolds a 
worm ; miraculously the worm puts on 
wings ; w r hen you stop to admire the beauti- 
ful wings, they vanish into death. Every 
thread in nature breaks suddenly and un- 
expectedly. So with Jesus of Nazareth. 
He was a net-work of opposites. Every 
action, like a highway in the Alps, leads 
suddenly to a precipice. He undergoes an 
intellectual eclipse and leaves His disciples 
standing in the dark as to what He meant. 
He contradicts Himself without explana- 
tion or apology. He is a labyrinth. At the 
end of each path is a Sphinx. Take the 
torch of your knowledge and experience and 
try to flash it down into His life; a myster- 
ious wind blows it out. He says things and 
does things that paralyze our knowledge, ex- 
periences, and intuitions. 

He was domestic in His tastes, but never 
had a home. His disciples one time said, 
“ To-night we will abide with Thee.” Then 
came the most pathetic sentence that ever 


182 


The Skeptic's Dilemma ; 


fell from lips : “ The foxes have holes, the 

birds of the air have nests, but the Son of 
man hath not where to lay His head.” He 
defended His disciples with supernatural 
power — He gave Himself to the soldiers. 
He spent His brief lifetime preaching 
against evil, then deliberately took a dying 
thief with Him into Paradise. 

He was a critic, He was not a cynic. He 
was brave, but not an hero. He was capa- 
ble of anger, but never rash. He was firm, 
but not obstinate. He was pious, but not 
impractical. He was humble, but not 
cowardly. He was gentle, but not effem- 
inate. He was superior to the world, yet 
craved its sympathy. He was dignified, but 
simple. He was economical, but not miser- 
ly. He was cheerful, but never humorous. 
He was inquiring, but never curious. He 
was temperate, but not austere. His forti- 
tude never became fatalism. His weakness 
never degenerated into apathy. His gener- 
osity never became indulgence. He was 
youthful in years, but venerable as the cen- 
turies in influence. He was keen, but not im- 
patient. His enthusiasm contained no 
fanaticism. He respected authority, yet de- 


The Mysterious Contradictions in His Life 183 

manded that the world, from Caesar down, 
and the generations of the future, should 
yield to Him as the final authority. He 
never apologized. He never said anything 
or did anything that needed an apology. He 
walked the earth like a king, but preserved 
the attitude of a servant. No European king 
could live as He lived and maintain his 
dignity. 

He said of Himself — “ I am the Son of 
man ; ” but we never associate Jesus of 
Nazareth with the idea of masculinity. A 
critical analysis of His character reveals a 
bewildering array of exquisite feminine at- 
tributes. He was delicate as woman ; modest 
as woman; sensitive as woman; self-poised 
as woman; esthetic as woman; loving as 
woman ; forgiving as woman. We never love 
great men, we admire them. We do not ad- 
mire Christ, we love Him. 

Who is the ideal Judge? The just Judge ! 
Brutus forever remains the type. When 
Brutus’ sons had committed treason and 
were brought before him, he says — “ I have 
no sons now, I tear them from my heart, let 
them be beheaded.” Would we regard as an 
ideal judge, one who forgave criminals? Yet, 


184 


The Skeptics Dilemma ; 


here is One who went about forgiving men 
and women, and claimed that in the eterni- 
ties He should be the judge of mankind. 

When He says, “ I am meek and lowly in 
heart/’ that is a distinct claim of humility. 
But to claim humility is to violate the law 
of humility. He violates it again when He 
says, “ A greater than Solomon is here.” He 
is speaking of Himself. He serenely affirms 
that He is greater than the wisest of His 
race. Imagine a young lawyer standing be- 
fore the Supreme Court of the United 
States and saying, “ I am greater than 
Blackstone.” When the people say to Him 
— “ Moses saith ” — He replies instantly, 
“ But I say unto you.” In other words He 
says, “ Moses and the prophets have had 
their day of authority; what I say now is 
final.” Reconcile this with humility. 

He says, “ I am the Son of man.” He 
does not mean that He is simply a man. He 
is humanity idealized. Now for women to 
use a man for an ideal, would be a violation 
of natural law. They would become mascu- 
linized. But countless millions of women use 
Jesus Christ as an ideal for the noblest 
graces of womanliness. No woman ever be- 
came masculinized because she became a dis- 


The Mysterious Contradictions in His Life 185 

ciple of Jesus of Nazareth. While in His 
personality we discover a wide range of 
those delicate attributes that jewel woman- 
hood, yet He is the ideal for manhood. Mil- 
lions of men to-day use Him as an ideal for 
the perfect life of man. No skeptic has ever 
affirmed that a man was made effeminate by 
becoming a Christian. He is also the ideal 
for children. Here is a threefold ideal : The 
perfect man, the perfect woman, the perfect 
child, in one Personality. 

Occasionally He seems strangely weak. 
At the tomb of Lazarus He weeps like a 
woman. But here is a contradiction — He 
says one day — “ Come unto me and be saved, 
all ye ends of the world.” He is speaking 
out of His consciousness of strength. The 
miracle is, that He projected into the con- 
sciousness of the people of His time, the 
faith that He could save them. The second 
miracle is, He projects far into future cen- 
turies, into the consciousness of people rep- 
resenting all races and conditions, the fact 
that He can save them. The millions of 
Christians to-day live sustained by His sim- 
ple unattested word — that He can save. 
Any one here could say as He did — “ Come 
unto me and be saved,” but if one of us 


186 


The Skeptic's Dilemma ; 


should affirm that, it would be declared to 
be the mark of insanity. 

He one time fed five thousand people — be- 
hold the philanthropist! Then He said to 
His disciples, “ Go and gather up the frag- 
ments ” — behold the economist ! We know 
from experience that the philanthropist who 
will feed five thousand people never con- 
cerns himself about the crumbs that are left. 
We also know that the man who gathers up 
crumbs never banquets five thousand people. 

In resources He is limitless, inexhaust- 
ible. He always knew what to do on a given 
occasion. He is never in doubt, puzzled, or 
in a quandary. He tells Pilate that He 
could summon legions of angels for His de- 
fense if He wishes. Then He submits to 
the crown of thorns, the scourge, and the 
cross. In other words, He consented to be 
crucified. For a man to do that would seem 
like suicide. 

In His day the scholar was a power. He 
never employed scholarship. In His day the 
sword was a power. He said, “ Put up thy 
sword.” In His day money was a power. 
He never used a copper to further His ends. 

His attitude toward people was unique as 
Himself. He laid responsibilities upon His 


The Mysterious Contradictions in His Life 187 

disciples as though they were archangels. 
We covet the friendship of respectable peo- 
ple, intellectual men and women, those who 
occupy the highest ranks in society. We 
never fellowship with, we do not even desire 
the acquaintance of, the offscourings of 
the social world. Christ reversed this. He 
spent practically all of His time with the 
common people. Some of the tenderest 
words that ever fell from His lips were those 
that He spoke when He met an outcast 
woman. He seemed to know many of that 
class. To them He was delicately reserved, 
gentle, full of compassion and forgiving as 
motherhood. Then in the presence of the 
Pharisees, when confronting men who repre- 
sented His race, the temple, the great past 
of Judaism, men who represented culture, 
law, morality, there suddenly fell from His 
lips anathemas indescribable. 

When He says, “ I am the Son of man,” 
evidently this is not a plea for any mortal 
weakness, nor is it an attempt to classify 
Himself. 

Scholarship affirms that if the pictures of 
Christ contained in the art galleries, upon 
the monuments and in the catacombs, if all 
these were folded into composite form, we 


188 


The Skeptic's Dilemma ; 


would have the exact image of Jesus of 
Nazareth. The writer of the third Gospel 
was probably a painter. It was an artistic 
age. It would have been perfectly natural 
for the early disciples to desire a portrait 
of the Master. John lived at Ephesus until 
he was past ninety. It would not have been 
unreasonable that some artist under the 
criticism of the apostle could have drawn 
an image that would have resembled Christ. 
The amazing thing is, that the paintings of 
Jesus Christ never leave upon us the impres- 
sion, that we are gazing upon one who repre- 
sented a splendid type of physical manhood. 
Not only that, but in our thinking of Christ, 
the picture we carry about in the art gallery 
of the imagination, we never associate with 
Him the idea of sex. 

When we say that we love Christ, the 
word love has a meaning unlike anything 
found in human experience. The word 
“ love,” as it relates itself to Christ, is 
sexless. But the martyrdoms of centuries, 
having their origin in that single sentence, 
“ The love of Christ constraineth me,” reveal 
potentialities compared with which the af- 
fections that belong to the sexes, the patriot- 
ism that belongs to the state, are as the 


The Mysterious Contradictions in His Life 189 

whisperings of a brook compared with the 
surge of an avalanche. 

He was granite-like in determination, yet 
saintliness takes its meaning from His bear- 
ing. His urbanity and condescension were 
never equalled by an ambassador. His dig- 
nity transcended that of monarchs. His de- 
nunciation of evil was terrible. His attitude 
toward the w T rong-doer was the wonder of 
His times. We find upon His lips no re- 
gret, no feeling of disappointment, no traces 
of despair. 

We judge men by the company they keep. 
He makes companions of fishermen, mingles 
with the mob, talks freely with men ranked 
as criminals, and women as harlots, yet it 
never occurs to us to judge Christ by that 
companionship. By His simple command 
men felt compelled to leave all and follow 
Him, yet His own surrender to a life of suf- 
fering has been the ideal of twenty centur- 
ies. He lays down His work at the end of 
three years and says His work is finished. 
No man that ever lived had the moral dar- 
ing to confront eternity and say, with dying 
breath — “ My w T ork is done,” — as Christ said 
it. 

He stands upon the earth, related to it 


190 


The Skeptic's Dilemma 


through birth, sustained by its food and 
drink, but his life is also merged into mys- 
teries outside of life and time. The super- 
natural hovers over His cradle and flashes 
its wings through all the days and nights of 
His earthly career. His carpenter’s bench 
loses itself in the transfiguration hour. A 
guest at a marriage, and sweating drops of 
blood in Gethsemane, constitute an unearth- 
ly blending of two hemispheres of antagon- 
istic experiences. In a fisherman’s hut eat- 
ing bread, He seems real enough, but in the 
earthquake hour of the crucifixion, the world 
is thrilled with a supernatural something, 
so appalling in majesty that in the books we 
call histories, He is not even ranked with the 
Martyrs. 


CHAPTER IX. 


THE SKEPTIC’S DILEMMA; RATIONALISTIC 
THEORIES CONCERNING CHRIST. 

One of three things is true of Jesus Christ. 
Either He was the result of accident, or of 
natural law, or a miracle. Was Jesus of 
Nazareth an accident? In this universe of 
cause and effect there are no accidents. 
Nothing ever simply happened. 

If a comet should wrap this earth in fire, 
that would not be an accident. To say, 
therefore, that He was an accident, would be 
to affirm that law had ceased to exist, that 
effects needed no causes. 

Was He the result of the natural laws of 
birth? Account for this mystery in Jesus; 
we find in His personality no footprints of 
the law of heredity. It is understood that 
modern science is entering an impeachment 
of heredity as an unbending law. But this 
can not be denied: Given a Chinese father 
and a Chinese mother, the babe has skin yel- 
low as parchment and eyes that tilt in the 
brow like the Tower of Pisa. Given an 
x\frican father and an African mother, the 


192 


The Skeptics Dilemma; 


babe is as black as a flower poisoned with 
frost. Given a Jewish father and a Jewish 
mother, — the child is not Chinese, African, 
or Saxon; it is Jewish, as if every page of 
the Old Testament had been burnt into its 
personality. 

But heredity, this potter’s wheel, upon 
which racial attributes are moulded like 
clay, heredity, whose hand of iron warps the 
mind and disposition, claimed no dominion 
over Him. Twenty centuries of Jewish 
blood flung their stormy waves upon His 
heart, but in the boldest flight of imagina- 
tion, it is impossible to think of Jesus Christ 
simply as a Jew ! 

Mary, His mother, is a Jewess. Her 
thinking, her ideals, her temperament, are 
Jewish. She possesses at once all the weak- 
nesses, graces, and attributes of her race. 
But in nothing does Jesus resemble His 
mother. From the standpoint of heredity, 
the physician cannot place his finger upon 
a racial resemblance. Are we reminded of 
Christ when we meet a Jew? Never ! Even 
His thought is as universal as Himself. 

Place Him in the balances and measure 
Him against the genius of His own people. 
The Jewish race of His hour had degener- 


Rationalistic Theories Concerning Christ 193 

ated from a flowering vine into poison ivy. 
It w 7 as narrow, bigoted, fanatical, suspic- 
ious, traditional, materialistic, more fierce 
in hatred, more cruel in revenge, in greed 
more ravenous, in ritual more idolatrous, in 
defeat more slavish, and in victory more 
tyrannical than any of the world’s races. 
But in Jesus we find attributes the reverse 
of all these. He w r as broad as the horizon, 
universal as the air, sympathetic as noon- 
day, unsuspicious, liberal thoughted, hating 
traditions, tender-hearted as motherhood, 
in innocence, snow r w 7 hite as the brow 7 of a 
maiden priest, the gentleness of a child 
crowmed with the majesty of an angel, rend- 
ing the materialism of His times with the 
ineffable radiance of His spiritual minded- 
ness, while cruelty , greed, money — to name 
these words in His presence is blasphemy. 

If the law r s of human birth can produce a 
living statue of heavenly gold, like Jesus 
Christ, w 7 e have a right to look for similar 
characters elsewhere. But in the thousands 
of years before His birth, unto the twentieth 
century since, no man has appeared who 
has suggested to the w 7 orld the faintest re- 
semblance to the Master. 

Soil, climate, environment have conquer- 


194 


The Skeptic's Dilemma; 


ing influences in the production of men. 
Asia produced Buddha. It could not have 
produced a free thinker like Socrates. The 
Roman genius could not have had its cradle 
in Damascus. We cannot transplant the 
ancient Jewish spirit into San Francisco. 
To temple the Chinese Confucius in Europe, 
his teachings must be regenerated. 

But Christ in Africa, Asia, Europe, 
America, wields a uniform influence. His 
teachings mould men in exactly the same 
type, without injury to personality or flay- 
ing the racial spirit, and these men, once 
Christians, are no longer affected by climate, 
customs or civilization. 

Take, for example, a man who surrenders 
to Christ, — as we say, “ is converted.” He 
will testify that the very rivers of his 
thought reverse their currents ; his con- 
science, which he thought was dead, rouses 
up like a lion ; his will is sceptered to right 
action, in spite of alluring temptation ; nay, 
the very aims of his life are winged with new 
and mighty purposes. It is easier to lift a 
river out of its bed than to transmute a 
wicked man into a good man. But Christ is 
performing this miracle daily ; not simply a 
disciple here and there, but lifting multi- 


Rationalistic Theories Concerning Christ 195 

tudes at once. A great revival is a time 
when the graves are opened, and the dead 
come forth in multitudes. 

Here are the representatives of the races : 
A Chinese, an Hindu, a Persian, a Greek, a 
Roman, a Jew, a Saxon, a Negro. Put into 
each one the teachings of Confucius. Do 
you make them Chinese? No! Or, the 
teachings of Buddha, are they Hindus? No! 
Or, the teachings of Zoroaster, are they Per- 
sians? Or the teachings of Socrates, are 
they Greeks? Or, the teachings of Seneca, 
are they Romans? Or, the teachings of 
Moses, are they Jews? No! 

Now put into each one the teachings of 
Jesus Christ and there is one result, 
these are Christians. And if at one end 
stand an Hindu, and at the other end Glad- 
stone, if the Hindu hath in his heart, mind 
and soul, the teachings of Christ, equally 
with Gladstone, in the sight of God and the 
Angels he is spiritually as valuable as 
Gladstone. Christ’s teachings affect men 
equally. 

Let us approach the problem from the 
standpoint of the doctrine of mathematical 
probabilities. 

There were millions of women living in 


196 


The Skeptic's Dilemma ; 


the world before Christ’s birth. How prob- 
able is it that one who, by common consent, 
will be called “ the greatest of the sons of 
men ” will be born of a peasant Jewess. 
That piece of stone yonder in the desert is 
the Sphinx in sculpture. Hamlet is the 
Sphinx in literature, but Jesus of Nazareth 
is the Sphinx of the ages. No one has ever 
understood Him. No one understands Him 
now. His biography has never been written. 
The Gospels are paintings, not biographies. 
The men who have tried to write the life of 
Christ have failed. Men representing all 
ranks, professions, creeds and races, have 
attempted it, but no life of Christ 
has survived the author’s generation of 
scholarship. For example, who, to-day 
reads the Life of Christ, by Renan, or 
Strauss? Or, take Mr. Beecher’s Life of 
Christ, who reads that? What is the cause 
of the universal failure in attempting to 
write this life? The greatest minds in the 
world have not been able to improve upon 
the simple Gospel narratives. 

The greatest minds cannot analyze His 
motives. Like charting the mountains and 
valleys of the sea, it is impossible. A man is 
never known until his motives and spirit are 


Rationalistic Theories Concerning Christ 197 

known. Perhaps we have received our finest 
interpretation of Shakespeare from Hugo, 
because he was a poet six-winged like 
Shakespeare. To analyze Christ’s motives 
would require a personality like Christ’s. 

Take, for example, His social life. The 
law is, “ Like seeks like.” Evidently rich 
men liked Him. Aristocrats sought His com- 
panionship. The schools were at first in- 
clined to friendship. The priesthood would 
have welcomed Him with an “ All Hail ! ” 
What was His motive in rejecting these 
splendid and powerful instruments which 
represented scholarship, political and re- 
ligious power, to live upon the most intimate 
terms with fishermen and wage earners? 
What value could a discipleship represent- 
ing a low social caste and poverty be to 
Him? Did He not know men? Yes, He 
knew that Peter was an insolent coward, 
that Thomas was a quicksand of skepticism, 
and that the heart of Judas was a smoulder- 
ing black flame of treason. What inspired 
Him to elect Judas to apostolic rank and not 
Luke! Why did He choose James, a rude 
fisherman, rather than the scholarly Nico- 
demus? 

Had Jesus Christ been an earthly genius 


198 


The Skeptics Dilemma ; 


like Napoleon, for example, with a dream 
of world empire tempting his vision, would 
He have remained among the withered vil- 
lages around Jerusalem? No! Human 
genius would have gone to Rome. Seneca was 
then alive. Imagine Christ standing upon 
the Roman forum delivering the world- 
thrilling sermon recorded in Matthew, be- 
fore an audience of Stoics and Epicureans ! 
Would they not have recognized that here 
were the solutions of their problems, pro- 
blems centuries old? If these solutions ap- 
peal to us now, think how much more pro- 
foundly they would have appealed to the 
despairing hearts of Rome’s great Stoics. 
Had Jesus of Nazareth gone to Rome, I 
doubt not that Seneca would have been His 
first disciple. I doubt not that the Stoical 
school would have surrendered. I doubt not 
that the statesmen, poets and scholars of the 
empire, nay, that Caesar himself, all, would 
have bent their knees in reverence. Why did 
He not go to the banks of the Tiber, wheel 
under his plans the enginery of the Roman 
empire, and there begin laying the founda- 
tions of the new kingdom? 

We do not know! To spend three brief 
years in those mud huts called “ villages,” in 


Rationalistic Theories Concerning Christ 199 

the deliberate attempt to reconstruct the 
world, was, as a human plan, as impossible 
of fulfillment as for a man to try to upheave 
a mountain range by plucking up a few daf- 
fodils growing at its base. 

The sinlessness of Christ has a miraculous 
meaning. Consider the many aspects under 
which you gaze upon Him. We see Him with 
the multitude, in the private family, the 
guest at a marriage, suddenly confronted by 
representatives of the schools, in the midst 
of a victorious march into Jerusalem, then 
beset by enemies, upon the Mount of Trans- 
figuration, in Gethsemane, before the San- 
hedrin, in the throne room before Herod, in 
Pilate’s Judgment Hall, on His way out of 
Jerusalem, and unto the last anguished cry 
of the crucifixion, but we can not point to a 
single weakness. He is never betrayed into 
a foolish, indiscreet, or self-interested word 
or action. It is everywhere a life of incar- 
nate holiness. 

To prove that Christ was a man, the bur- 
den of proof lies upon the skeptic. Let Him 
prove wherein Christ sinned. For skepti- 
cism to say that He was a man and sinless 
is a contradiction in terms. Man is sinful. 
There has never been an exception. Christ’s 


200 


The Skeptics Dilemma ; 


holiness is not the result of culture. You 
find there no moral development. His con- 
science is as perfect the first day we meet 
Him as the last. It is never blurred. He 
is never better one day than another. He 
knew every temptation, passion, weakness, 
and limitation of human nature, but not 
from personal experience. 

The word holiness is beyond our compre- 
hension without the life of Christ to define 
it. They who attain the highest degree of 
moral goodness, are most frequent in their 
cries of shame, remorse and repentance. 
Christ prays much, but repents of nothing. 
He says, “ Which of you convicteth me of 
sin? ” In literature there is no portrayal of 
a sinless life outside of the New Testament. 
There is only one alternative, either Jesus 
Christ was sinless, or, the Gospel writers 
were angels. 

There are certain things about Jesus 
Christ which mark a distinct departure from 
the ranks of men. For example, His knowl- 
edge of men. It is absolute. Instantly 
when He meets Nathaniel He describes his 
character. He penetrates the secret wonder 
of Nicodemus, the double life of the Samari- 
tan woman, the unspoken questions of His 


Rationalistic Theories Concerning Christ 201 

enemies, the perplexity of the rich publican, 
the hidden thoughts of His disciples. He 
seemed to know men better than they knew 
themselves. 

His knowledge of future days is evidence 
of knowledge without limitations ! Without 
hesitation, He uprolls the scroll of to-mor- 
row’s events, whether that to-morrow en- 
wrapped a day, a year, or, the ages which 
are still kneeling behind the throne of God 
with sealed lips. 

Christ’s prophecies have an historical 
quality, a time limit. He prophesied the 
treason of Judas, the cowardice of His dis- 
ciples, the disloyalty of Peter, the nature of 
His own death, when and where it would 
take place. He prophesied the downfall of 
the temple, the siege of Jerusalem, the day of 
Pentecost, the persecution of the Christians 
by the Romans, the conversion of the Gen- 
tiles, then He swept His eye to the end of 
the world and prophesied the universal 
triumphs of His church through the ages. 

- Here the skeptics must pause. To say the 
Christian Church in its infancy created such 
a vision is to say, an effect created its own 
cause. The Church is here, surviving 
twenty centuries. The cause of its existence 


202 The Skeptic's Dilemma ; 

must be equal to the divine results of twenty 
centuries. 

He claimed miracle power; the authority 
to teach the wise ; a knowledge of futurity ; 
that He was the light of the world ; that He 
was doing the fullness of God’s will; that 
He had the right to re-establish religion ; the 
right to set aside the law of Moses ; the right 
to cleanse the temple; the right to forgive 
sin ; the right to teach worship acceptable to 
God; that He was the predicted Messiah; 
that He would regenerate races; that men 
should worship Him as Lord, though it 
broke every human relationship and cost 
martyrdom. Search history and find an- 
other man who has made such claims. Is 
there a man in the world now, who would 
usurp the throne of a solitary affirmation? 

He says to humanity, “ I am from above, 
ye are from beneath.” He stood in the pres- 
ence of all religious and ethical theories, and 
said, “ I am the light of the world.” States- 
men, poets, scholars, prophets had theorized 
concerning a method of life. He said, “ I 
am the way.” 

Without having seen other races, or 
studied other systems, or older civilizations, 


Rationalistic Theories Concerning Christ 203 

He said, “ Come unto me.” He identified 
His thought, plans and life with God : “ I 
and my Father are one.” Nowhere do we 
find a discord between His life, His claims, 
and assumptions of power and authority. 
His feet touch the earth — His voice falls to 
us from infinite heights of moral supremacy. 

He appropriates the titles and dignities of 
God. He permitted and demanded worship 
as God. He declared solemnly that He 
would be the judge of mankind in the end 
of the world. We have only one alternative : 
What He said is either true or false. If 
true, He was the Messiah, “ The Immanuel,” 
“ God with us.” If false, God has written a 
lie, upon the religious hopes of mankind. 

The law of heredity can not claim Him, 
for His spirit is not cramped within Jewish 
walls of racial limitations. The law of en- 
vironment can not claim Him, for no good 
thing had ever come out of Nazareth. The 
law of education can not claim Him, for He 
is not stamped with the imprint of the 
schools. The law of opportunity can not 
claim Him, for He lived among a rejected 
people and was limited to a ministry of three 
years. The law of genius can not claim 


204 


The Skeptics Dilemma ; 


Him, for genius hath its several fixed orbits, 
and Christ moves in a moral realm above the 
intellects and saints of earth and time. 

Some skeptics affirm, in trying to account 
for this mysterious personality, that one 
time a young Jewish Rabbi lived, whose 
beautiful character so appealed to his disci- 
ples that, in their enthusiasm, they added 
virtues to his life, thereby making his per- 
sonality supernatural. They ask us to be- 
lieve that four men, each in turn, succeeded 
in drawing an ideal man, a task that Shakes- 
peare never even attempted. Shakespeare 
created ideal women. They are perfect, as 
women. They are not angels, but no grace 
could be added to enrich their feminine 
charm. Shakespeare failed to create one 
ideal man. 

He created everything else but that. 

This Saxon poet refuses to deal simply 
with rocks, trees, rivers, and mountains. He 
fashions a human avalanche and calls it 
Macbeth ! It crushes the world. A starless 
midnight folds you in its arms; you are in 
the grasp of that materialism called Csesar ! 
You hear a mountain falling into the dark- 
ness ; it is Othello staggering into doubt ! A 
human grave rises athwart your path; the 


Rationalistic Theories Concerning Christ 205 

treasons of centuries laugh hideously 
through lips of flesh and blood ; that human 
tomb is Iago ! All that is beautiful in affec- 
tion greets you under two names, “ Romeo,” 
“ Juliet ! ” 

Shakespeare proposes to show what the 
human heart can suffer. He touches only 
one chord, a child’s ingratitude. To preach 
this theme, he shows how it unseated Lear 
from his throne. Then Shakespeare sum- 
mons the wildest moods of nature to express 
the agony of this heart-torn king. He places 
Lear upon a desert heath ; he imprisons him 
under a cloud of tempest and thunder; then 
a fool is placed by his side! Night, storm 
and insanity are created to take the place of 
tears, to show what a father’s heart can 
suffer. 

Shakespeare refuses to deal with men as 
individuals. He dips his pen into the blood 
of races. He pours the entire history of 
the Jewish race into one man. He empties 
into that soul the cupidity of Jacob, the 
faith of Abraham, the joys, hopes, aims, the 
bigotry and conservatism of a great people, 
and calls that masterful spirit, — Shylock ! 

Again Shakespeare pauses. He has 
emptied the Roman Empire into Brutus. 


206 


The Skeptic's Dilemma; 


England is pictured in kingly form. Egypt 
lingers upon the red, voluptuous lips of 
Cleopatra. Then comes the supreme effort. 
He compresses a thousand years into flesh 
and blood, puts a question upon those lips, 
and calls this regal nature, — Hamlet ! 
Hamlet is Shakespeare himself. 

Is this an ideal man? 

See, the blood of Polonius rusts the sword 
in his trembling fingers; listen to that un- 
earthly, wild and pathetic cry upon his lips, 
“ Oh that this too, too solid flesh would 
melt!” What is this? The cry of Heathen- 
ism. It means despair ! Shakespeare never 
solved one moral problem that opens a gate 
toward eternity. 

Milton did not describe an ideal man ; nor 
did Dante; nor did Virgil; nor did Homer. 
Search the world’s literature of fact, poetry, 
fiction, myth, tradition and of history, there 
is no character that even faintly resembles 
Jesus of Nazareth. 

AXIOMS. 

I. All sacred beliefs must be accepted as 
true until proved false. Why? Because, first, 
they may be true; secondly, they are true 
until proven false. Men do not lie regard- 


Rationalistic Theories Concerning Christ 207 

ing religion. They may be mistaken, but 
deliberate falsehood is a moral impossibility. 
Religion involves eternity. Men do not 
reach up hands against the skies and write 
deceitful tidings upon the white lips of the 
stars. 

II. It must be conceded that a truth may 
be mysterious, not necessarily uncertain. 
How life comes out of death we do not know. 
It is a fact shrouded in mystery. Take the 
Christian dogma of the incarnation. The 
mystery of the incarnation is not greater 
than Christ Himself. He is not an uncer- 
tainty. That He lived is an historical fact. 
Moreover, the incarnation is not more mys- 
terious than natural human birth. Science 
is as powerless in any birth chamber to ex- 
plain “ How? ” as it is at the Bethlehem 
manger. 

III. A truth may be apprehended, but 
never wholly comprehended. We apprehend 
the solar system, we do not comprehend it. 
We always speak of it in terms of mathema- 
tics. Between a row of figures and realms of 
light, — who can overleap that gulf? To 
comprehend anything means absolute 
knowledge, but absolute knowledge is an 
impossibility. That is true regarding a weed 


208 


The Skeptic's Dilemma ; 


or a planet. The same is true in religion. 
Take the life of Christ. Measure it against 
human life. The octaves of an organ are 
limited, not because there is a limitation to 
music, but the limitation is in our capacity 
to hear. It is as easy to imagine an hundred 
octaves as one. In comparing Christ’s life 
with ours, we discover octaves which find 
marvelous echoes in our own. The octave 
of friendship, that of suffering, of weariness, 
of tears, the triumphant hour, the hour of 
desolation, — but here we pause! In the 
transfiguration there are octaves of the sup- 
ernatural, and in the crucifixion there are 
octaves not only of suffering, but deep with 
profound spiritual significance; there the 
eternities touch His dying lips, but He 
speaks right on through the gathering dark- 
ness. These are realms in His experience 
concerning which we know nothing. Nor 
has any man that ever lived, professed to 
know them. 

Take the Christian doctrine of regenera- 
tion. If it be a fact, it lies within the range 
of individual experience. By him it is ap- 
prehended, not comprehended. What has 
occurred, and the process by which it 
occurred, are secrets with God. It can be 


Rationalistic Theories Concerning Christ 209 

simply affirmed ; it can not be demonstrated, 
because, there can be no psychology of re- 
generation. We have not the divine data 
upon which to construct a theory that can 
explain its processes. A regenerated man 
is a living miracle, as though one unlocked 
a tomb door and came forth. 

IV. A truth may be so vast it can only be 
hinted at. An orchestra could convey to 
this audience through a symphonic upheaval 
the suggestion of an ocean storm, but all the 
instruments of music that man has made or 
will make can never do more than hint forth 
the tragical cries of an angry sea. So with 
the doctrine of Christ’s divinity. If it be 
true, it involves eternity, which is a truth 
so rich that it can not be circumscribed 
within the poverty of human speech. Between 
humanity and divinity is not the distance 
between a child and a man. It is not the 
difference between a savage and a Socrates. 
Time and physical growth will uplift the 
child into manhood’s stature. Crowd cen- 
turies of universities into the brain of sav- 
agery, and a Socratic magnificence is the 
result. But the time element and college 
culture play no part in spanning the gulf 
between ourselves and Jesus Christ. In the 


210 


The Skeptic's Dilemma ; 


presence of Christ, the universal testimony 
of the saints of all ages has been a confession 
of shame and humiliation. They always af- 
firm their unworthiness of being Christ’s 
disciples. He is simply unapproachable. 
We can not even conceive of a process by 
which we can in a reasonable degree ap- 
proximate the overpowering grandeur of His 
personality. The word “ astronomy ” is a 
dead word. It conveys no real picture of 
the midnight, with its seas of worlds ; so the 
word “ divinity ” does not contain the heav- 
ens it hints forth. Scholars are as bewil- 
dered in the presence of that word as an owl 
suddenly flung into a noontide. 

V. The evidence of a truth may be in par- 
tial ruins. But that does not destroy the 
truth itself. The only proofs we have that 
Pompeiians lived are the ruins of a city. No 
one in our century ever saw a Pompeiian. 
We accept the evidence of broken statues, 
fragments of architecture, and sculptured 
columns, as proof that the Pompeiians were 
an artistic people. The fragmentary char- 
acter of the manuscripts upon which are 
built the Gospels, is not an argument 
against the facts contained in those Gospels. 
There is revealed a spider’s malice in the 


Rationalistic Theories Concerning Christ 211 

modern attack upon the Gospel narratives. 
The poetry of Homer, the speeches and 
essays of moralists and orators who lived 
centuries before the Christian era, are 
accepted in our universities without a whim- 
per of protest ; whereas the evidence for the 
authenticity of the New Testament, com- 
pared to the evidence that Homer ever lived 
or wrote the Iliad, or that Demosthenes de- 
livered the speeches accredited to him, is 
overpowering. 

Moreover, any process of criticism that 
challenges the authenticity of the New Tes- 
tament can be used for the disruption of 
every page of history. The evidence that 
Christ lived is the Christian church. If 
broken statues are accepted as evidence of 
the artistic genius of the Pompeiians, the 
Christian church, with its supernatural 
ideals, its supernatural works, its superna- 
tural influence for righteousness upon civili- 
zation, is the proof that Christ, the founda- 
tion of the church, was supernatural, or a 
miracle is here, — the effect is greater than 
the cause. 

VI. A truth is never conditioned upon our 
own perception of it. Confront a blind man 
with an Aurora Borealis. To him it is mid- 


212 


The Skeptic s Dilemma ; 


night. No amount of argument can prove 
to him the weird transfiguration yonder in 
the horizon. He says, “ I do not see it.” 
The reason is not in the sky. It is because 
he is blind. 

Judas and John had the same opportun- 
ity. They were peers in the Apostolic Col- 
lege. What unutterable horror we feel 
when in imagination we see there hideously 
outlined against the night the writhing body 
of Judas, the suicide, his name an execra- 
tion, a hissing and an anathema. John on 
Patmos contemplating the panoramic up- 
heaval of angels, trumpets and thrones, 
presents to us the difference between two 
men. The truth was perceived by one and 
unperceived by the other. Jesus Christ is 
the spiritual Sun of our world. Those who 
do not see Him have no excuse save self- 
caused moral blindness. Any intellectual 
reason for rejecting His light ceases to be 
an excuse, — it becomes a crime. For the 
man morally blind to deny the proposition 
that Jesus Christ is the Son of God has 
nothing to do with the fact. He may be a 
moral paralytic. The Jewish priests did 
precisely the same thing with a thousand 
years of prophets as witnesses, and with 


Rationalistic Theories Concerning Christ 213 

Christ Himself in their very presence, en- 
throned amid wonderful works. 

Our knowledge of God’s Fatherhood we 
obtain from Jesus Christ. That knowledge 
is divine knowledge or it is not. The Uni- 
tarian and skeptic, affirming that Jesus 
Christ was divine only as we are divine, make 
every utterance of His lips, the crippled 
opinion of mortal thinking. For the Uni- 
tarian and skeptic to say that we may accept 
Jesus as an ideal, is not enough. A statue, 
a Titian picture in the house, are not suffi- 
cient for man’s moral development. Just as 
we need authority in civil life robed in law, 
in the background helmeted police and the 
jail, above these the constitution of the Re- 
public, and sceptered high above all, the Su- 
preme Court of the United States, so in the 
religious life of man, the imperative need is, 
— Authority. 

Christ, as a moralist, only ranks earth- 
ward with Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and 
that wonderful slave, Epictetus. What is 
lacking in these men? It is the tribunal 
voice of authority. When Jesus Christ 
speaks of sin, its consequences upon life, do 
not these men also teach the same? Yet we 
do not hinge our knees at their command, 


214 


The Skeptic's Dilemma ; 


If Jesus Christ is in the same category that 
spheres the mortal flesh of Aurelius and of 
Seneca, they are equal to Him in divine au- 
thority. But we read their writings with 
curious eyes, without fear, without remorse, 
and without tears. But in the presence of 
Jesus Christ the heart trembles, the most 
arrogant intellect is startled, the conscience 
is terror-stricken with forebodings of dis- 
aster. We feel that in His speech are dread- 
ful issues involving future judgment. The 
man who does not feel this, is either a saint 
or a devil. 

VII. A truth not visible here and now 
may be visible some other place. The rings 
of Saturn are not visible to the naked eye. 
They may be visible, however, to the inhabi- 
tants of another world. The Christian doc- 
trine of the resurrection, if true, is not con- 
ditioned upon our assent or denial. The 
resurrection was a physical fact discerned 
through the eye and senses, requiring no 
faith. The testimony of these witnesses 
must be final. No amount of historical criti- 
cism or scientific skepticism can destroy a 
fact here, a fact twenty centuries in the past, 
or, a fact belonging to futurity. 

This world may live for a million years 


Rationalistic Theories Concerning Christ 215 

or millions of years. If the inhabitants of 
this earth shall outnumber the sands of the 
sea, their combined unbelief, denial, argu- 
ment and testimony as witnesses could not 
alter one fact in a century chaptered with 
“ Yesterday.” The resurrection belongs 
there, not here. 

Imagine an ant creeping up one of the 
ponderous columns of a great cathedral. Its 
delicate eye perceives minute flaws and 
crevices in the polished marble, and straight- 
way it turns skeptic, and pronounces the 
building an impending ruin. But to behold 
that temple, in all its overpowering wealth 
of columns, arches and domes; to contem- 
plate the holy purposes undergirding the 
foundations, the moral radiance folded in 
every statue, colonnade, altar and canvas ; to 
grasp the thought of reverence, love, and 
worship for which it stands, — all this is not 
for an ant to comprehend. 

So the intellectual-eyed Unitarian gazes 
upon the Christianity of God, and in the 
towering doctrinal column of the Trinity 
discovers a philosophical flaw, a logical 
crevice, a mathematical contradiction, and 
straightway pronounces the structure a 
metaphysical failure. But to grasp Christian- 


216 


The Skeptic’s Dilemma 


ity as an architectural whole ; to profoundly 
estimate its holy influence upon the individ- 
ual, society, and the world; to measure its 
earth-sweeping victories, over men, nations, 
and civilizations ; to march by its side 
through the centuries; to realize its power- 
ful hold upon the present hour; to contem- 
plate its divine relations to oncoming ages, 
its stupendous claims upon eternity ; — to 
comprehend all this in detail and in full- 
ness, is more than the eye of the professional 
skeptic or Unitarian can grasp, or his intel- 
lect understand. Either that, or Christen- 
dom is prostrate before an idol made of hu- 
man clay. 


CHAPTER X. 


THE SKEPTIC^S DILEMMA; THE FORGERY 
THEORY. 

One of two things is true, either Jesus 
Christ was, or He was not. If He was, the 
four Gospels contain a description of this 
God-man and we are under moral bonds to 
reckon with His claims. If He was not as 
portrayed by the four Gospels, there is a pic- 
ture there of one who never lived, but was 
created in the furnace fires of the human in- 
tellect. Not only that, but there are four 
distinct descriptions, — four different types 
of mind are at work. Internal evidence, 
the style of writers, prove this. The man 
who wrote Matthew’s Gospel could not have 
written John’s Gospel. 

The skeptic’s affirmation that this char- 
acter is a dramatic creation involves a mira- 
cle greater than Christ Himself. 

What are the facts? 

First, the Jewish mind was not dramatic 
in its genius. Not a single great dramatic 
character like Brutus or Richelieu appears 
in the Old Testament. Moreover, intellec- 


218 The Skeptic’s Dilemma ; The Forgery Theory 

tual Judaism at this hour was like a stag- 
nant pool in the Sahara. Jesus Christ is 
an ocean that rolls tidal waves against the 
shores of twenty centuries. Oceans do not 
rise from desert pools. Moreover, the law 
of art is, that the Creator transcends that 
which is created. Above the tragedies of 
Shakespeare, is Shakespeare himself. Be- 
yond the pyramids are the architectural 
minds that planned them. This is the law of 
art. Here is the reversal of this law. Four 
self-confessed sinful men create a sinless 
life. Not one writer pretends that he is an 
ideal man himself, yet each portrays in 
large outline and in detail the most perfect 
life described in literature. 

The intellectual difficulties of this theory 
grow insuperable when you consider the 
fact that four men proposed to create an 
ideal life. We can understand how one man 
might dream of such a task. Also, that 
feeling unequal to the picture, he might in- 
vite the reinforcing genius of another; but 
that three men, nay, four, each independent- 
ly of the other, within the same epoch, 
should undertake this, and not one writer, 
even by inference, should refer to the others, 
is itself supernatural. 


The Skeptic’s Dilemma ; The Forgery Theory 219 

Their self-proposed problem is this: To 
portray God inshrined in mortal flesh. 
Where shall they begin? How shall they 
begin? What materials shall they use? In 
the libraries of the past there are no ma- 
terials. The skeptic is challenged to place 
his finger upon a single outline, real or imag- 
ined, in the literature of the ancient world, 
including the Old Testament, that these 
writers used as the model for this person- 
ality. 

The first problem is, Where shall this 
mysterious Being have His origin? They 
agree that He shall not descend from the 
skies in angel form. Then He must have 
human birth. Scattered through the races 
of earth were prophecies of a God-man who 
was soon to appear. 

Mark ! These are Gentile prophecies. 

Judaism was a tropical zone, producing 
volcanic natures. Heathenism was an arc- 
tic zone, producing iceberg intellects. Emo- 
tionalism was despised. Imagination was 
kept in bounds by the laws of art. Hence, 
these Gentile prophecies are simply stupefy- 
ing. 

Socrates urged his disciples to seek for 
one who he declared would deliver them 


220 The Skeptic's Dilemma ; The Forgery Theory 

from the fear of death! Plato, four hun- 
dred years before Christ, in the most elec- 
trifying paragraph in Pagan literature, 
affirmed that when the perfect man came, 
the world would first scourge, then crucify 
him. How the heart burns when you read 
that sentence! HSschylus, the Shakespeare 
of Greek poets, announced that he knew of 
one who would one day dethrone Jupiter. 
He refused to give his name. Tacitus and 
Suetonius both affirmed that it was an an- 
cient tradition that universal sovereignty 
would one day rise out of Judea. Virgil, 
the Roman poet, like a bugler, warned the 
world of the advent of a king under whose 
reign the lion and lamb would one day 
dwell together in peace. Even China joins 
the singers. Confucius predicted the com- 
ing of one who would revolutionize the 
world ; while that mysterious voice, Zo- 
roaster, in Persia, prophesied the nearness 
of one who would be the universal destroyer 
of evil. 

Here are tongues chanting softly in the 
night. These are not the croakings of 
swamp-like natures. They are the world 
builders. They pressed the sacrament of 


The Skeptic's Dilemma ; The Forgery Theory 221 

civilization to the lips of races. As they 
toiled, a vision came and vanished. 

Now, which race shall the writers of the 
Gospels elect to give birth to Him who shall 
be the incarnation of these prophecies, plus 
the prophecies of Judaism? There is China, 
centuries old, with colleges painting her 
walls with civilization. There is India, with 
a mighty phalanx of poets, seers, and great 
religious geniuses. There is Persia, a peo- 
ple gifted with wonderful spirituality. 
There is Egypt, with priests veritable 
Colossi in scholarship. Then there are 
those epoch-making peoples, the Greeks and 
the Romans. What motive swayed these four 
penmen to pass by the world’s mountain 
races and elect that ancient valley of con- 
tempt, the Jewish race, for this divine 
parentage? In the first place, was not the 
Jewish race the maligned and hated race 
of history? Was it not the byword and 
hissing among the nations? To ask China, 
India, Egypt, Persia, Athens, or Rome to 
accept a Jew as a representative of Heaven, 
would be frothing madness. 

But waiving all the prejudices of the na- 
tions against that race, when these writers 


222 The Skeptic's Dilemma ; The Forgery Theory 

elect the Jewish race to motherhood the 
Messiah, an obstacle stands in the way, un- 
surmountable as the palace gate of the 
North Star. The literature of Judaism 
globes a thousand years of prophecy. If the 
Messiah comes from that race, mark the in- 
tellectual difficulty! What kind of person- 
ality could be conceived of, into whom these 
riverlike centuries filled to the brim with 
prophecies could be emptied? Remember, 
also, these prophecies do not always run 
parallel. Sometimes they seem contradic- 
tory. When the prophecy hints that the 
Messiah shall be a “ Lamb,” the problem of 
the writers is to create one who shall be in- 
carnate gentleness. But He is also called, 
“ The Lion of the Tribe of Judah ! ” How 
could there be conceived of one who would 
embody lion-like qualities and at the same 
time show forth the nature of a lamb? This 
involves a contradiction, impossible of 
reconciliation. A lion and a lamb stand at 
the extremes of nature. They exclude each 
other by every natural law. 

At last they begin ! The story is unpaged 
with a star in the sky, a chant by angels, a 
birth by a virgin mother. We will concede 
that men would imagine that such wonders 


The Skeptics Dilemma ; The Forgery Theory 223 

would attend a divine advent into history. 
A God-child is now upon the earth. At 
once the problem becomes baffling. What 
shall they do with Him? Behold, they hide 
Him behind a carpenter’s bench for nearly 
thirty years. What was their motive? W r hy 
should they hide Him at all? And of all 
places, at Nazareth! It was the scorned 
village, a mockery among the Jews them- 
selves ! “ Can any good thing come out of 
Nazareth? ” This is an old world proverb, 
centuries of contempt folded in derisive 
laughter. 

Moreover, who will believe that a carpen- 
ter is the human essence of divinity? What 
motive swayed these writers to try to in- 
troduce into the world the representative of 
God, and then cover Him with the ragged 
poverty of a wage-earner, instead of the pur- 
ple of royalty or the cloak of the scholar? 
Have not Plato and Seneca declared, “ A 
man who works with his hands is a slave?” 

At last He appears. Our first glimpse of 
this Messiah is when He is involved in temp- 
tation. Study this sphinx-like chapter of 
His life. It involves the most bewildering, 
dangerous and reason-throttling contradic- 
tions. No one saw what took place. What- 


224 The Skeptic’s Dilemma ; The Forgery Theory 

ever occurred, He told it. The contradic- 
tion lies in this: If the temptation scene 
did not occur, there is a falsehood involved. 
To say it did occur, and to say in the same 
breath that, “ He was God in the flesh,” is 
to say that God can be tempted! That is 
simply overwhelming ! Ask scholarship the 
meaning of that temptation scene! It is 
easier to explain how to disorb the earth and 
push it back into the sun. The schools of 
twenty centuries have been unable to har- 
monize the contradictions involved. If 
scholarship cannot interpret that chapter 
in His life, imagine the genius it took to 
create it ! In the wide range of drama and 
tragedy, there is no problem, there is no 
situation to compare with it. Nor can the 
imagination create one like it. 

Suppose a divine man should appear. 
How would we know it? His speech would 
proclaim him. Greatness can not hide it- 
self. A morning in June needs no eulogy, 
and certainly no introduction by a fan-fare 
of trumpets. These forgers are now con- 
fronted with the task of having this imag- 
inary creation speak words, each wearing 
the halo of divinity. What shall they make 
Him say? Ask questions? No, we can ask 


The Skeptic’s Dilemma ; The Forgery Theory 225 

questions. Socrates did that. The world 
will soon know whether or not this be 
simply a Jewish Socrates. To prove that 
He is divine, instead of stating problems, 
He must solve them. What problems? All 
problems ! There must be no moral problem 
involving one child of that hour, not one 
man, not one woman; there must be no 
moral problem that involves the family, the 
state, or the world’s to-morrow, — there 
must be no moral problem that relates it- 
self to earth’s tribes and races, to all possi- 
ble conditions between naked savagery and 
the most splendidly robed civilization, — 
there must be no problems that belong to 
sickness or health, weakness or strength, 
poverty or wealth, ignorance or culture, 
problems that reach from the cradle through 
all the amazing experiences of life to the 
edge of the grave, — and then beyond it ! 

Each and all of these problems must have 
solutions that will appeal to the world as 
true, that will be received by the universal 
heart, mind and conscience, and that will 
survive the tests of centuries of human ex- 
perience ! 

And this the skeptics ask us to believe 
was done! They ask us to believe that four 


226 The Skeptic’s Dilemma ; The Forgery Theory 

unknown writers placed upon imaginary 
lips the solutions of the moral problems of 
this world, and the solutions of those mys- 
terious and dreadful problems confronting 
every human being when flung by death into 
the eternities. 

Suppose a man appeared and affirmed that 
he was the Son of God? We would say, 
“ Prove it: go forth and raise the dead!” 
Why would we demand this? We would as- 
sume that a divine personality can do that 
which mortal genius can not. In other 
words, we would demand of one claiming a 
supernatural heritage, that he shall do 
supernatural works. 

The astronomer will take one ray of light 
from a distant star, and submitting it to 
chemical analysis, will tell what the star is 
composed of ; and yet no man on earth ever 
has seen or ever will see that star. The 
miracles of Christ may be subjected to a 
moral analysis more severe than any chemi- 
cal test. Whether the alleged works were 
feats of jugglery or revelations of superna- 
tural power may be easily demonstrated. 

If miracles ever occur, they must have a 
moral basis, a moral background, and a 
moral purpose. Therefore, they must not 


The Skeptic’s Dilemma ; The Forgery Theory 227 

occur to excite curiosity. They must not 
occur frequently. They must not be mon- 
strous. They must be morally right. They 
must reveal God, and they must save man. 
None of the alleged miracles of India will 
survive these crucial tests. The works of 
Christ, one by one, if placed in these delicate 
scales, will attest God’s presence and power. 
Moreover, to suggest even that they were the 
feats of a juggler is to say a lie grew upon 
the holy lips of Christ, which is monstrous. 

To affirm that these writers created these 
works in their imagination would be in itself 
a miracle. Skepticism is challenged to de- 
scribe a single miracle He did not perform, 
necessary to attest that He was God incar- 
nate. 

It is impossible to think that the fourfold 
description was deliberately planned out. 
It is equally impossible to say that it was 
simply an accident. But concede that all 
these strange things happened. Suppose 
that four men, in whose presence Shakes- 
peare and Plato were nurslings, suppose we 
concede that these four men fabricated this 
description of Jesus of Nazareth; the 
problem then is, what shall they do w T ith 
Him ? How shall they dispose of Him? 


228 The Skeptic’s Dilemma; The Forgery Theory 

They have introduced this character into 
earth and time. Their task is now to have 
this mysterious one disappear. Remember 
how they began ! They began with a tumult 
of wonders in earth and sky. That was gen- 
ius at work. But what is the law of genius? 
It is to maintain its own height. The earth- 
worm and the eagle live in two different 
realms. If the advent was marked by such 
prodigies as the rending of the night by 
angel wings, imagine what the exit would 
be! Would not the exit be at least as super- 
natural as the advent? If four men had in- 
vented the records of this sinless life, the 
wonderful words, the transfiguration, the 
miracles, — imagine the appalling heights of 
glorified description these intellectual Ti- 
tans would have attained, in telling of His 
departure. The apocalyptic visions of John 
would be a jangling interlude compared to 
the gorgeous description of that moment 
when this One, heaven born, returned to His 
own. W T hat possessed four men first to think 
out a God-man, then to agree to try to palm 
Him off upon the religious life of the world, 
and allow Him to spend His dying hours 
upon the earth, nailed to a wooden cross like 
a Roman slave, between two thieves? 


The Skeptics Dilemma ; The Forgery Theory 229 

When the skeptic asks us to accept that 
theory of the Christ of the Gospels, he asks 
us to accept a greater miracle than Jesus 
Christ was Himself. 

Skepticism, as a last resort, declares that 
civilization produced Him. Then, we are in 
the realm of cause and effect. Here are 
two commonplace axioms : The same 
causes forever produce the same results ; sec- 
ond, greater causes produce greater results. 
What is our problem? We must take up the 
civilization of Nazareth, decompose its ele- 
ments, and analyze them. We will then 
affirm that, given a civilization equal to 
Nazareth, it will produce a character like 
Jesus of Nazareth. Also, if in history a 
civilization is generated greater than that of 
Nazareth, we will have as a result a mightier 
character than Jesus of Nazareth. We have 
had civilizations since infinitely greater 
than that of Nazareth, yet no skeptic in two 
thousand years has ever affirmed that he, 
having been born in a nobler age, was there- 
fore greater than Jesus of Nazareth. Nor 
has this eulogy been pronounced upon any 
historical genius of these centuries. To have 
suggested to Paul that he outranked Jesus ; 
to have hinted this to Luther ; nay, if the dis* 


230 The Skeptic’s Dilemma; The Forgery Theory 

ciples of Voltaire, of Hume, or of Ingersoll 
had attempted to bow down and worship at 
their feet, it would have been rejected in 
horror. 

Then the time problem! He deliberately 
affirmed that He had come to redeem the 
world, to lay the foundations of a kingdom 
that would make every throne His footstool. 
How much time did He have for this pro- 
posed miracle, the reconstruction of earth’s 
races? How did He spend His time? There 
are whole months in the three years of His 
earthly ministry that we know nothing 
about. He spends night after night alone in 
prayer. He spends most of those brief 
months in obscure villages that have practi- 
cally disappeared from the map. He spends 
His time with outcasts, with ignorant men 
and women, who could be of no assistance to 
Him whatever. Yet, He never hurried. He 
lived as though He had hundreds of years 
in His possession. He lived as though eter- 
nity were at His command in which to com- 
plete His mission. 

Was Jesus Christ an accident? Then the 
prophecies are accidents. But in this uni- 
verse of cause and effect, there are no acci- 


The Skeptic’s Dilemma ; The Forgery Theory 231 

dents. The universe is not built upon the 
contingency of fantastical caprice. 

The prophetic element of the Old Testa- 
ment cannot be ridiculed, obscured, ignored, 
denied, or waived out of this problem. It is 
a fact big as a thousand years. Suppose this 
to be an audience of skeptics, and these ques- 
tions should be asked : “ Gentlemen, do the 
prophecies in the Old Testament point to a 
Messiah? ” The answer would be, “ Yes! ” 

Question, “ Do these prophecies relate to 
Jesus of Nazareth? ” The skeptics would 
say, “ No.” 

The third question, “Do these prophecies 
apparently relate to Jesus of Nazareth? ” 
Why do they hesitate. They dare not say 
“ No ! ” Because these prophecies appar- 
ently do relate to Him. 

Now let us return to the problem of 
mathematical probabilities. How probable 
is it that one would be born of a Jewish 
peasant woman in whom hundreds of years 
of prophecy apparently will converge? You 
might as well ask, how probable is it that a 
Bethlehem will one day lift Jerusalem and 
transplant it upon the Alps. 

The Apostle somewhere speaks about “ a 
cloud of witnesses,” 


232 The Skeptic's Dilemma ; The Forgery Theory 

To materialize that sentence, pause under 
a cloudless midnight sky and contemplate 
the bewildering and ever-changing glory, the 
march and countermarch of stars across the 
firmament. Then remember that these are 
but the dying camp-fires of a vanished army. 
Behind them are suns and worlds of such 
awful magnitude that the mathematics of 
earth are powerless in their presence. Yet 
these are but sparks and firebrands flung by 
mysterious winds from the zone of some far- 
off conflagration. Go deeper still into the 
infinitudes, and universes dwell there, fixed 
like wheels in the chariots of God. Go 
deeper, and behind them, beyond them, there 
hangs a glorified mist, a stupendous maze of 
glory such as rises upon the vision, when one 
is speeding through the night within the 
boundaries of a great metropolis. Pass be- 
yond them, and astronomy proclaims the ex- 
istence of still mightier universes, flaming 
like the tents of legions of archangels. Then 
the telescope shrinks back amazed, for it 
hath caught glimpses that proclaim, that 
where the avalanche of worlds seems fading 
into storm clouds, those clouds themselves 
are universes ; so that which seemed the end 
is but the beginning; we have contemplated 


The Skeptic’s Dilemma; The Forgery Theory 233 

only the genesis of creation ; the apocalypse 
lies still beyond ! 

If all that sumless vast of worlds were liv- 
ing intelligences, we should gain but a par- 
tial conception of the dread and immortal 
splendor unrolled in the apostle’s vision 
when he speaks of “ a cloud of witnesses ! ” 

There is the page of history, a bending 
dome of sky; and in that sky the Oriental 
religions, a universe! There is the Jewish 
race, a universe glorified with starry-souled 
prophets ! The poets and scholars of Athens, 
a completed universe ! The triumphs of the 
Roman empire, the epochs of the golden age, 
another universe! A universe of ideas cir- 
cling around a universe of mighty deeds ! A 
universe of States interpenetrating a uni- 
verse of art ! Auroras of poetry, flaming be- 
yond auroras of glorified battlefields ! Hori- 
zons of science, supplementing horizons of 
philosophy! A Pleiades of kings, augment- 
ing a Pleiades of martyrs ; the flight of souls 
like comets, illuminating the centuries ! The 
everlasting rain of epoch-making reformers ! 
The unfolding centuries, more wonderful 
than the skies at midnight, luminous with 
personalities instead of worlds, — and then, 
the Heavenly citizenship: there, according 


234 The Skeptics Dilemma; The Forgery Theory. 

to John, are thrones, principalities, powers, 
and hierarchs of spirits; countless aggrega- 
tions of angelic potencies; measureless mul- 
titudes of priestlike Seraphim; the elder 
children of eternity, themselves an host that 
no man can number; — then add to these the 
glorified ones whose music greeted the morn- 
ing hour of creation, the overpowering glory 
of archangels, the waving of dread wings, 
the tumult, the surge of oncoming dreadful 
presences, whose personalities would require 
a miracle of thought and of speech to ex- 
press in terms of human comprehension, — 
and binding this living grandeur of events, 
men, and angels into unity of plan and or- 
ganization, there rises out of Bethlehem, the 
fulfillment of these thousands of years of 
prophecy and preparation, the central sun, 
Jesus of Nazareth ! 


CHAPTER XI. 


CHRIST'S KINGDOM, CONTRASTED WITH PLATO’S 
REPUBLIC, THE THEORY. 

No kingdom-builder has ever been the in- 
carnation of the genius of his race. Jesus 
of Nazareth was the embodiment of every 
moral attribute that belonged to the genius 
of His people, and possessed attributes un- 
known to Judaism. First let us witness the 
unique glory of Israel, measured against the 
Greek and Roman Genius. 

Athens stood for poetry ; Rome for prose ; 
Judaism for spiritual things. Athens was a 
search for the beautiful; Rome for justice; 
the Jew for righteousness. Athens was 
(esthetic; Rome practical; the Jew ethical. 
Athens stood for causes; Rome for results; 
the Jew for final causes and results. Ath- 
ens stood for ideas; Rome for facts; the Jew 
for eternal verities. Athens stood for art; 
Rome for business ; the Jew for ideals. The 
Athenian poets sang of lofty deeds ; the Ro- 
man poets of war and trade; the Jewish 
poets of the triumphs of God. Athens built 
an Academy ; Rome built a throne ; Judaism 
built an altar. 


236 Christ’s Kingdom Contrasted with 

Athens treated men as citizens; the Romans 
treated men as soldiers; the Jews regarded 
men as the servants of God. Athens treated 
women as serfs, sometimes as scholars ; 
Rome treated women as slaves; in Judaism, 
the words Wife, Mother, Sister, Daughter 
were hallowed with moral significance. Ath- 
ens treated children as property of the 
state; Rome treated children as the prop- 
erty of their parents; the Jews treated chil- 
dren as the gifts of God. Athens made war 
in self-defence; Rome made war for con- 
quest; the Jews made war for human lib- 
erty. Athens toiled for self-development ; 
the Romans toiled for the development of the 
state; the Jews labored for the development 
of the world. Athens stood for the past; 
Rome for the present; Judaism for the fu- 
ture. Athens stood for a city; Rome for an 
empire; Judaism for a new kingdom. The 
Athenian aristocrat was a man of genius; 
the Roman aristocrat was a millionaire; the 
J ews glorified the common people. 

The Athenian religion was full of joy and 
freedom; the Roman religion was full of 
gloomy restraint; the Jewish religion was 
full of solemn responsibilities. Athens 
adorned her gods with virtues; Rome wor- 


Plato’s Republic ; The Theory 237 

shipped virtues as gods; the Jews incar- 
nated virtues into their daily lives. The 
Greeks first found gods, then built temples 
for them; the Romans first built temples, 
then went out and stole every god they 
could lay their hands on; the Jews, without 
temples, worshipped Jehovah. The Athe- 
nian religion was intellectual; the Roman 
religion political, the gods belong to Rome; 
the Jewish religion was pervaded with the 
solemn spirit of eternity. Athens summed 
herself up in Socrates, a man of thought; 
Rome in Caesar, a man of war; Judaism in 
Moses, a man of law. Zeus was the god of 
Olympus ; J upiter was the god of the Roman 
Capitol; the Jewish Jehovah was the Maker 
of worlds. 

Here are attributes of the Jewish genius, 
attributes worn in fragments but resplend- 
ently in the loftiest moments of Israel’s his- 
tory. They represent centuries of discipline. 
But not a Jew in the Old Testament is the 
incarnation of one of these attributes in all 
its heaven -born radiance. Neither from 
Abraham to Malachi, does the race stand 
forth into a transfiguration hour, with all 
these moral splendors glorifying the age. 

But Christ, like the Sun, gathers up the 


238 Christ's Kingdom Contrasted with 

light of all these supernatural attributes 
and, adding to these the glories of His own 
nature, overwhelms generations. 

We have measured Christ against the Jew- 
ish genius ; now let us measure Him against 
the Greek. The Greek spirit dwelt in Plato, 
the greatest intellect of the ages. His master- 
piece was a description of “ The Ideal Re- 
public.” He gathered the greatest theories 
of statecraft, tried and untried, and stamped 
them with his own genius. As a theoretical 
state, it is the political pyramid in the litera- 
ture of the world. But it has always re- 
mained a theory, beautiful as a dream, un- 
substantial as a dream. The statesman of no 
century ever attempted to materialize that 
dream into a fact. 

Let us bring Plato’s Republic and Christ’s 
Kingdom into parallel contrast. We are 
about to compare Plato with Christ. The 
comparison will show, not simply Christ’s 
superiority, but His absolute moral supre- 
macy. The analysis will also show that 
Christ’s kingdom, in theory and as it is being 
actualized by the Christian Church outranks 
Plato’s Republic, as a glorified cloud in the 
sky outranks the shadow of a man. 

First, let us see the advantages of Plato’s 


Plato’s Republic; The Theory 239 

birth, the wonderful richness of the age in 
which Plato was born. 

Pericles is there, the patriot, and Sappho, 
corrupt but beautiful and scholarly, and 
uEschylus, full orbed, with sun-like grandeur, 
with Sophocles and Euripides circling 
around him like splendid moons. 

The battle of Marathon has just ended. 
Only yesterday, Herodotus could have been 
seen describing to the astonished Greeks 
what he had discovered in Egypt. Thucydides 
is busy writing the annals of the Pelo- 
ponnesian war. Xenophon has made an im- 
mortal retreat with ten thousand men from 
the heart of Asia, and Archimedes is there, 
picturing on the sand the geometry of the 
skies. It was an age that listened to Demos- 
thenes in the Senate, an age that revelled in 
the paintings of Apelles, each one a master- 
piece, an age that saw the heights of the 
Acropolis suddenly burst into marble splen- 
dor, under the genius of Phidias. 

This was the age of Plato, a period radiant 
with sculpture more wonderful than the 
pyramids, an hour mightier in eloquence, 
music, poetry, and scholarship than any 
preceding epoch since primeval man lived in 
caves. 


240 Christ's Kingdom Contrasted with 

But when Jesus Christ was born, a world- 
wide crisis had reached its zenith. There 
was a pause in the march of the nations. Not 
a trumpet’s voice or drum’s beat proclaimed 
new triumphs of progress. Imperial states 
lay in their tents, like soldiers the night be- 
fore the battle. There slept the Jewish race, 
folded in robes of beautiful prophecies. 
Rome lay still, hushed by the dangerous 
music of a tyrant’s voice. Athens lay 
drunken with the wine of skepticism. Egypt 
pillowed her head in the lap of the Sphinx 
and scarcely breathed. India, in the purpled 
East, dreamed of Buddha. China crouched 
by her side asleep without a dream. Persia 
wore upon her white brow a funeral wreath. 
It was the saddest hour in the world’s his- 
tory. Civilization seemed undergoing the 
frightful processes of self-burial. The rich, 
red blood of art-producing genius was turn- 
ing into polluted water. Only a feeble throb 
in its mighty heart, attested the tidings that 
the world still lived. It was in this hour of 
universal moral lethargy and intellectual 
skepticism, that some shepherds kneeled at a 
manger in Bethlehem and worshipped a 
Child. 

Bethlehem ! It is not for thee, O Athens, 


Plato's Republic ; The Theory 241 

civilization’s queen, to inaugurate Messiah’s 
reign. Plato shall be thine and Socrates, 
and vast the multitude of thy Seers. To thee 
shall Phidias come, marbling thy streets with 
sculptured victories. The Muses tented in 
thy gates shall plume the arts with eagle 
wings, and at thy dusty shrines the human 
brain shall bow in reverence. But, O God- 
dess of Wisdom’s mysteries, ’tis not for thee 
to gaze upon Messiah’s face. 

Nor thee, dread Caesar’s realm, ’tis not for 
thee to greet the One of whom the prophets 
spake. Rome, thy mantle shall fall on cities 
where merchants do congregate and fatten 
on the spoils of trade. On kingdoms, whose 
armies feast on blood and do thy battle thun- 
ders emulate. On states where senates rule, 
instructed by the laws; — yea, wherever 
ships, and swords, and thrones, the lust of 
gold and sovereignty, do constitute the 
boasted heritage of the age, there shall they 
celebrate thy pomp and majesty. But Eman- 
uel, Israel’s king, shall not set foot upon thy 
seven hills. 

Nor thee, Jerusalem, ’tis not for thee to 
cradle the Prince of God. Triumphant are 
thy temples and thy palace walls, but thou 
hast bloody hands. Thy past shines glor- 


242 Christ's Kingdom Contrasted with 

ious as doth the moon on midnight seas, but 
in thy sacred courts evil is girt with diadem. 
Alas ! for thee have kings kneeled down and 
prayed, have prophets wept, and martyrs 
shrivelled into flame. Thou hast a virgin’s 
face, though smitten with a thousand years, 
and in thine eyes deep folded lie prophecies 
of Him thou didst ordain as “ David’s Son.” 
But thou hast the harlot played, and ’tis 
not for thee to mother the Prince of God. 

Jerusalem, Athens, Rome! Once did ye 
rule unchallenged, each in turn, monarch of 
earth and time! Now are ye mocked, de- 
spised, cast down, and Bethlehem exalted! 
Bethlehem ! Thou weed hidden in the grass ! 
Thou village clod of poverty ! Least of the 
thousands of Judah, thou art all glorious! 
Thy meanest stones shall outrank gold ! 
Mightier art thou than Csesar’s throne and 
Zion’s fame and Plato’s school! Kings, 
scholars, priests, — earth’s multitudes, shall 
tread thy weed-grown streets in pilgrimage ! 
Hail Bethlehem ! Thou art the East and in 
thy skies shall rise “ The Sun of Righteous- 
ness ” ! 

Four hundred years after Plato, came 
Jesus of Nazareth. Plato was once sold as a 
slave. Christ died the death of a slave. Mys- 


Plato's Republic; The Theory 243 

terious link between these two ! Each gave 
the world a political vision. Plato called his 
“ The Ideal Republic.” Christ described His 
in the Sermon on the Mount, as “ The New 
Kingdom.” Let us bring Plato and Christ 
face to face. Let us analyze and sweep into 
contrast their distinctive principles. In this 
contrast, I hope to show, that Christ’s teach- 
ings are heaven born, and Plato’s are rooted 
in the swamp of human error. 

Plato founded his Republic upon man as 
an earthly fact. Christ structured His king- 
dom upon man as a spiritual force. Plato 
demanded the exclusion of all poets, even 
Homer himself, wherein the poet taught 
low ideals. Christ demanded avoidance 
of the very appearance of evil. Plato 
said, “ Blessed the soldier.” Christ said — 
“ Blessed are the poor in spirit, the pure in 
heart, the meek, the merciful.” 

Plato said that the governors of the 
state should be moral men; Christ calls to 
the humblest individual to be the light of 
the world and salt of the earth. Plato eulo- 
gized external morality ; Christ declared that 
if the righteousness of His disciples did not 
go deeper than the morality of the law-abid- 
ing Pharisees, they could not enter the King- 


244 Christ's Kingdom Contrasted with 

dom. Plato made the violation of law to 
consist in overt action ; Christ placed crime 
in the motive behind the act, therefore 
anger equals murder, sinful imagination is 
adultery, and the foolish taking of oaths, 
blasphemy. Plato would resist evil with 
force; Christ announced the sublime doc- 
trine, the resistance of evil with goodness. 

Plato taught the efficiency of war ; Christ, 
in His loneliest hour, said to his brave 
disciple, “ Put up thy sword.” Plato said 
nothing about benevolence; Christ made 
almsgiving a duty. Plato made Prayer a 
public ceremony, Christ a secret privilege. 
Plato glorified wealth, Christ the treasures of 
the moral life. Plato made loyalty to the 
state the first duty; Christ affirmed loyalty 
to God as the supreme imperative. Plato 
emphasized the earthly life of food, raiment 
and shelter; Christ placed these in the low- 
est category of man’s needs. God and 
righteousness were named above all earthly 
things. 

Plato made man the arbiter of his own 
good; Christ affirmed that God was the 
providence of man. Plato conditioned duty 
upon a race — Greeks to be loyal to Greeks ; 
Christ, in the Golden Rule, rose above all 


Plato’s Republic; The Theory. 245 

races and laid universal obligations upon 
each individual. Plato refused admission to 
Barbarians; Christ, with the vision of hu- 
manity before His eyes, said — Everyone 
that doeth my Father’s will,” is a citizen of 
the Kingdom. Plato taught the Brahman 
doctrine of caste — the priest, the soldier, the 
mechanic, the agriculturist. With Christ 
all were equal, since all should be brethren. 

Plato gave the most beautiful women to 
be the wives of the most cultured men. 
Christ made marriage holy as a sacrament 
and gave womanhood her crown. Plato per- 
mitted slavery; Christ, in His declaration 
that “ To know the truth is freedom,” laid 
deep the foundations of modern liberty. 
Plato offered no hope of development to the 
common people; Christ, in making wage- 
earners His disciples, inaugurated the reign 
of the common people. Plato saw only in 
one type, an ideal rule, the rule of The Aris- 
tocracy; Christ, rising above all earthly 
forms of government, proclaimed God as 
King of Kings. 

The Republic did not recognize man as an 
immortal being. It taught that morality is 
possible without divine help; that sin is ig- 
norance; that knowledge is virtue; that re- 


246 


Plato’s Republic ; The Theory. 


demption is attained through culture; and 
that justice is the crowning virtue of char- 
acter. 

The Republic was only for scholars, an 
aristocracy of human genius. The Republic 
was to be Greek — it could not admit Bar- 
barians. Its caste system compelled the de- 
gradation of the masses. Women, as the 
common wives of men, invited corruption. 
The theory that children should belong to 
the state, reversed natural law. The idea 
that the individual should be merged into 
the state, would destroy the manhood of the 
individual. The state’s offering to solve 
soul problems, contradicts the profound in- 
tuitions and hunger of man’s spirit nature. 


CHAPTER XII. 


CHRISTAS KINGDOM, CONTRASTED WITH THE 
ROMAN EMPIRE: THE FACT. 

A Roman poet stands not far from the 
Manger of Bethlehem. That man was the 
poet Virgil. He was a poet, also a prophet. 
He stood in those last days amid the splen- 
dor of Roman Imperialism, but to him it 
seemed a Vesuvius threatening to destroy 
universal life. Hence the minor notes in his 
song. The world’s music had been untuned 
by the rude voices of nearly a century of bat- 
tlefields. Rome had bound the world in 
law’s which had grown rusted as an iron 
chain. But w 7 hen Virgil came, the human 
mind w T as in process of growth and expan- 
sion. World-wide conceptions of religion 
and empire gilded the dreams of men. A new 
procession of centuries was seen marshaling 
their forces. A new T order of things was im- 
minent. The old religions w r ere singing 
requiems. Dogmas w^hich seemed rock were 
crumbling into superstitions. The people 
looked upon their priests as upon tombs. 
Ceremonials mocked the worshipers. The 


248 Christ’s Kingdom Contrasted with 


altars with their fiery brows terrorized men. 
A profound spiritual hunger, which the 
philosophers and priests had failed to sat- 
isfy, was growing in the minds of races. 

It was this universal unrest that transfig- 
ured the eyes of Rome’s last and greatest 
poet, A strange cry suddenly rends his lips. 
An apparition has amazed his sight. Be- 
yond the throne of Caesar, he sees as in a vis- 
ion, a mightier throne, a swordless king, 
under whose reign the lion and the lamb 
were to dwell together in peace. It was this 
outburst, as magnificent as that in Isaiah, 
that makes this splendid bard the master 
spirit of his age. 

When Jesus Christ was born, Augustus 
Caesar sat upon the throne of Rome. He 
disguised the empire under the form of a Re- 
public. He introduced the arts of peace. 
He kept the people amused, that they might 
not think too seriously. He developed 
agriculture. He encouraged art. He fos- 
tered literature. He found Rome a city 
built of brick ; he made it a marble 
metropolis. Then gaze upon those master- 
pieces of architecture, rivaling in sublimity 
the temples of Egypt. Gaze upon the statues 
fresh from the hands of genius. Then the 


the Roman Empire ; The Fact. 


249 


baths, the temples of the gods, the palaces, 
the pictured columns, the forum, the Senate, 
the scholars, jurists and priests, and last of 
all and above all, Caesar! — and the Roman 
Empire stands before you ! 

There is a single sentence in the New Tes- 
tament that interprets the philosophy of his- 
tory. It is that which affirms that Jesus of 
Nazareth was born, “ In the fullness of 
time.” That meant that the ages had com- 
pleted their task. It meant that all that 
humanity could do had been done. All that 
the human mind could think out, every pos- 
sible solution, had been wrought by the 
schools. It was “ The Golden Age.” A 
golden milestone had been driven in the 
earth. The most wonderful period in the 
history of earthly civilization had reached 
its zenith. 

What are the counter facts? Why was it 
necessary to have a revelation at this mo- 
ment? Let us analyze the actual social and 
political conditions that reigned. 

Let us summon the poet Horace for a wit- 
ness. Underneath the social life of the Ro- 
mans he saw cruelty. Underneath the pleas- 
ures of life he saw that life was empty and 
meaningless, hence his satire, hence his 


250 Christ's Kingdom Contrasted with 

scorn. While the age was strong in arms, it 
was weak in morality. While it boasted lux- 
ury, poverty in its most pathetic forms 
crouched at the palace door. While it had 
literature, vices stalked through the streets 
unabashed. Rome had religions, but the 
temples were empty. Rome had Philoso- 
phers, but they were skeptics. Rome had 
theories of morals, but corruption abounded. 
Rome had theatres, but they were immodest. 
Rome had gorgeous architecture, but the 
people were clamoring for bread and games. 
Rome had statues, but they ofttimes por- 
trayed the most savage passions. Rome had 
poets, but they were frivolous. Rome had 
scholars, but the masses were ignorant. 

Petronius declared that Rome was like a 
field outside of a plague-smitten city in 
which there was nothing but carcasses and 
vultures feeding upon them. The passion 
for money had so corrupted commercial in- 
tegrity that honesty became almost a crime. 
Tacitus and Seneca are terrible witnesses of 
the diseased mercantile life, while Juvenal 
walked the streets, his verse lashed into fury 
by imperial shamelessness. Forgery had de- 
veloped into a fine art. Sycophants and 
parasites swarmed the couches of the rich, 


the Roman Empire ; The Fact. 251 

mingling poison with medicine to hasten the 
realization of wealth. Theft wrinkled its 
scowl upon the sovereign face of commerce. 
Idleness wedded extravagance, and luxury 
perfumed vices. The Senate hung like a 
stringless instrument, the rhythmic melody 
of its law forgotten. Order was chaos. The 
poor were helpless in the Courts, while the 
rich bought up judges and mocked at law 
as imps do at virtue. 

There were costly palaces, baths and 
libraries, but in the side streets poverty and 
degradation raised their heads in venomed 
malice. It was an “ Age of Gold,” — rather, 
let us say, an age plated with gold, but un- 
derneath alloyed with savageries. Men were 
simply sculptured clay, mere shapes of 
human natures, not men. Civilization’s sun 
gilded the splendid prison-houses called pal- 
aces. There was not a free school, not a hos- 
pital, not an asylum, not an institution 
where charity lived and mercy went forth. 
The hearts of the people congealed into ice, 
and the sighs of the poor swept through the 
streets without response. 

The position of woman was indescribable. 
The noblest women of Rome went to the 
police courts and obtained license to prowl 


252 Christ’s Kingdom Contrasted with 


the streets at midnight and trade their 
beauty for gold. 

Seneca declared marriage to be a valuable 
institution, because it made the violation of 
the marital vows fascinating. It was said, 
“ Vice walks the streets unmasked, inno- 
cence is no longer rare, it has ceased to 
exist.” Another great Roman jeered, “ Is 
there a man in the world who desires to be- 
come a voluptuary, a gambler, a libertine, 
let him come to Rome and learn.” Livy 
mournfully affirmed, Rome can no longer 
bear her vices, nor the remedies for those 
vices.” 

What was the result of this tainting of 
woman’s honor? 

The crystal seas of literature became stag- 
nant pools. Art blushed the cheeks even of 
savages who came to Rome to sell lions for 
the amphitheatre. The theatres which once 
aroused patriotism now soiled their lips 
with vulgar songs which slew the innocency 
of youth. The army which yesterday swept 
upon a battlefield singing like a storm, had 
lost its heroism, and its glory like a meteor 
fell and vanished in the universal night. 
The soldiers were damned with vices which 
have no name. The brothel had set its can- 


the Roman Empire ; The Fact. 253 

cer seal and curse upon each face, and there 
they limp and creep and snarl, those wolves, 
who once were Caesar’s lions ! Moral teach- 
ers, like Seneca, the makers of the ship of 
state, had sunken into the slime of sensual- 
ism. Once, the Emperor and the people bent 
reverential knees to virtues as to gods ; now 
guilty priests swing incense before altars, 
where criminal passions are enthroned. 
The most dreadful crimes skulked behind 
the mask of religion. Murder lost its horror. 
Infanticide became respectable. The clown 
was applauded, the poet and scholar were 
scorned. The education of children was 
given over to voluptuous Greeks, and they 
destroyed the foundations of the family. 

Listen to the verdict of Galen, the great 
physician of the hour. He has his finger 
upon the pulse of the Roman Empire in its 
Golden Age. He says, “ The Romans walk 
the streets with bloodshot eyes, flabby 
cheeks, trembling hands and ruined memor- 
ies, because of unnatural vices with each 
other.” 

Seneca, the preacher of the hour, Rome’s 
greatest Moralist, Seneca who lived in the 
world when Jesus Christ was on this earth, 
this man is going to give you his final judg- 


254 Christ's Kingdom Contrasted with 


ment regarding the solution of life. He 
says : “ Seest thou yon steep height? Seest 
thou thy throat, thy heart? Seest thou the 
rope, the dagger, poison, the precipice? 
These are the gateways of escape.” Seneca 
affirmed the only solution was to commit sui- 
cide. 

There is a tradition that Romulus and 
Remus, who built the city of Rome, were 
suckled by a wolf. The spirit of the wolf 
never departed from the empire. There is 
another tradition, that murdered blood was 
spilled upon the first wall flung round Rome. 
That blood became prophetic. There never 
was a time when Rome did not have blood 
upon her walls. 

Caesar! That name once majestic as a 
battlefield, now began to terrorize the world 
like the hideous cry of a leper. Caesar 
fabricked the ancient empire upon Oriental 
ideas. He tried to replume the broken wing 
of Egyptian despotism. Rome became a 
star, it gave out light, but not life. It glori- 
fied a race. It spent its strength upon the 
present generation. It tried to harmonize 
the discords of society, by building schools, 
formulating laws, and forging political 
bonds of iron. Rome was man moving man- 


the Roman Empire ; The Fact. 255 

ward. It worshipped the arts as gods, built 
temples to happiness, and jeweled earthly 
life with beauty. But its chariot wheel 
crushed individualism. Upon Caesar’s lip 
sat the breath of cemeteries. The knees of 
the people were used as steps leading to a 
throne. The Senate became an iron scepter 
of imperial caprice. The diadem became a 
ditch in which the liberties of the people 
were defiled. The army yoked itself to the 
drunken mood of that crowned beast in the 
palace, and wars were waged for conquest, 
for the sake of spoils, money and women. 

Therefore, the deeds aimed to make the 
Tiber majestic rotted its very banks. The 
Roman legions, like starved tigers, drank the 
blood of races. Under freedom’s broken 
wing, sat the classes, but not humanity. 
Woman was unqueened. The word 
“ Mother,” lost its halo. Inequalities sharp 
as thorns transfixed society. Vices were 
made virtues, by fitting them with diadems 
of imperial sanction. Against this dread 
majesty of ice burned fiercely the fires of 
social wrongs, demanding solution. 

Rome proved that the state could not 
solve soul problems, that social antagonisms 
could not be adjusted by law, and that 


256 Christ's Kingdom Contrasted with 


statutes ratified by the Senate could not 
make ideal men. 

Rome finally surrendered to foes without, 
although its shield of defense was the 
soldier. “ Might makes right/’ is not and 
can never be the impregnable bulwark of the 
state. 

Rome, like a consumptive, was dying and 
did not know it. The hectic flush upon the 
cheek of a consumptive, is not a flag of vic- 
tory, but the prophecy of death. Rome had 
the hectic flush of apparent health : imperial 
armies, poets, statesmen, scholars, but Rome 
was dying. 

I one time saw a sunset which seemed 
fairly to portray this hour, the dying hour 
of Roman imperialism. I stood upon the 
highest range of the Allegheny Mountains. 

The sun had disappeared, but his shining 
remained. To the left was a field with a 
plow sticking in the furrow. On the right 
were pasture lands for flocks and herds, the 
melody of sheep bells softly touching the air 
with music. The day was done, and the hour 
grew into an intense silence. 

Toward the west the fields were already 
folded in deep shadows. The forests in the 
background were indistinct but massive, 


the Roman Empire ; The Fact. 257 

while the summits of the mountains in the 
distance levelled themselves into a broken 
velvety line of blue haze. Above that rim 
rose the sky. The contrasts in color were 
simply indescribable. The most gorgeous 
tints and hues inter-blended. Streams of 
fire, an apocalypse of splendors, rolled and 
flamed, as though at a hundred points at 
once a transfiguration scene was unfolding. 

Looking toward the north, I noticed a 
wonderful change taking place. The bril- 
liant colors were fading, and a mysterious 
afterglow of sombre tints began creeping 
over the landscape. It was the twilight! 
Onward swept this weird influence. A 
church spire vanished. The rail fences in the 
far away seemed to crumple into air. The 
scattered groups of trees massed themselves 
into huge splotches of ink. The twilight 
swept its fingers across the sky, and the lus- 
trous gold merged into leaden hues. Then it 
seemed to move forward, a gigantic person- 
ality of darkness, blotting out hedges, and 
logs, and fields of corn. The ground on 
which I stood seemed to tremble. The plow 
shriveled up into a ghostly outline. The 
winds began to whisper. An insect broke 
the stillness with its strange cry. The earth 


258 Chiist's Kingdom Contrasted with 

seemed putting on a shroud of death, when 
suddenly the sky, lifting itself above the 
night, slowly, softly, beautifully deepened 
into blue, and out of the depths, a delicate 
gleam of white reached down. It was the 
evening star, lifting the earth into the shin- 
ing of countless midnight suns. That twi- 
light hour was Roman imperialism, and that 
star, — The Star of Bethlehem ! 

What was the genius of the New King- 
dom proclaimed by Jesus of Nazareth? 

It was unlike anything the world had ever 
seen. It was to be a federation, not of men, 
but of souls. It had its final cause in the 
moral culture of the individual. Every will 
that submitted to Him, He accepted as a 
throne. The citizens of that kingdom have 
but one law, — “ Love one another.” Search 
the civilizations of antiquity, you find noth- 
ing to parallel this kingdom. Yet, in a rapid 
utterance, it leaps from His lips so complete 
in detail that the statesmen of the world 
have not been able to detect a flaw or sug- 
gest an improvement. 

Christ did not duplicate the scepter of 
Caesar, because He came to replace the 
golden age of things with a golden age of 
righteousness. He did not unsheathe the 


the Roman Empire ; The Fact. 259 

sword, because He came to save, not to de- 
stroy. He did not try to fascinate mankind 
with the glitter of gold, because humanity 
needed morality and not wealth. He did not 
employ literature, because He came to re- 
plenish the human conscience. He did not 
summon the genius of art, because the earth 
was already filled with more beautiful 
statues than personalities. What a tragedy ! 
He did not build schools, because philosophy 
had failed, and humanity needed a revela- 
tion. 

The kingdom of Jesus Christ was a trans- 
figuring power, working from the within to 
the without. It concentrated itself upon each 
individual as upon a world. It transformed 
men instead of conditions. It offered its 
breath to all races. It enthroned character 
above culture. It diademed the individual 
conscience with the majesty of a senate. It 
chiseled the passions into marble-like calm- 
ness. It horizoned mortal life with immor- 
tal possibilities. It incarnated holiness as 
the soul of happiness, and placed righteous- 
ness as the defense of the state, instead of 
the scarlet pomp of war. 

The new kingdom declared that the filthy 
rags of the slave, in God’s sight, were of 


260 Christ’s Kingdom Contrasted with 

equal rank with the robes of monarchs. It 
vestured every man with transcendent 
rights. It proclaimed universal liberty. An 
Apostle declared that in Jesus Christ 
there was neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor 
free. Christianity tried to make every man 
a moral Caesar. Christianity purposed to 
make Rome what it ought to be, not tested 
by older civilizations, but measured in the 
white light of God’s throne of holiness. 

The objection, urged by the heathen skep- 
tics, when Christianity appeared in Rome, 
was, that Christianity was not a philosophy, 
that the theory of the new kingdom was for- 
eign to any vision of statesmanship found in 
the schools. The Christian scholars 
accepted the challenge. It was conceded that 
Christianity was not a philosophy. When 
had philosophy presumed to offer redemp- 
tion to the world? Did it not, like an Egyp- 
tian sorceress, whisper curses with its 
spoken blessings? What reform had it ever 
nurtured into manhood? The schools were 
not for the common people. Only a trained 
wing could follow their sky-treading specu- 
lations. Moreover, did not their schools, 
like wolves, devour each other? 

It is because Christianity is the reverse of 


the Roman Empire ; The Fact . 261 

these things, that it claims supernal rights. 
Christianity bends its knee to the sover- 
eignty of reason, but refuses to worship the 
mind as a god. It is a religion of revelation, 
not of speculation. It is the charioteer of 
every moral reform. It arches its sky over 
all races. It is a divine chorister, harmon- 
izing the truths of the ages. The kingdom 
of Christ had not its origin in a schoolhouse, 
but in the secret counsels of the Almighty. 

This was the glory of Christ’s kingdom. 
It cared nothing for titles . For the first 
time in history, the common people had a 
kingdom they could call their own. When 
before had a kingdom of earth transfigured 
slaves, harlots, and lepers with moral 
graces? The sneer of the Romans, that 
Christianity was of barbaric birth and un- 
worthy scholarly consideration, was met by 
a powerful rebuke. Why, then, thundered 
the Christian Apologists; why, then, do 
the skeptics employ every resource of 
wisdom in their warfare? Lightnings 
should battle with oaks, not with weeds ! 

But, behold ! here is the cultured Marcus 
Aurelius leaving his throne to fight like a 
common soldier; Celsus wearing the pol- 
ished shield of the school ; Julian, Porphyry, 


262 Christ's Kingdom Contrasted with 

Lucian, sworded with scholarship, for what? 
To wrestle with a child’s fable? In proving 
the Gospel writers were ignorant men, the 
skeptics proved too much! They themselves 
have demonstrated that it was an intellect- 
ual impossibility for those writers to invent 
the life of Christ. 

Then came the magnificent counter- 
charge. Let Aurelius, Celsus, and Julian 
explain how it happened that this kingdom, 
created by a Jewish carpenter, is the only 
kingdom large enough for the human race. A 
kingdom, whose softest words are more pow- 
erful than queenly tears; whose message 
was a funeral trumpet to Judaism; whose 
monuments are the empty temples of pagan- 
ism ; whose hand had plucked from the gods 
their diadems; in whose camp already were 
tented many of the masterful intellects 
of the age. Instead of being the foe of the 
Roman Empire, it was its angel. What vice 
did it not confront with anger? What 
tyranny, whether of internal passion or of 
enthroned caprice, did it not antagonize? 
Was there an infamous law, habit or cus- 
tom, that did not find in this kingdom a 
mortal enemy? 

Behold its triumphant march through 


the Roman Empire ; The Fact. 263 

Caesar’s realm ! A kingdom without gods or 
temples, pouring from golden vials the per- 
fume of a new civilization. A kingdom 
initiating slaves, women, children, scholars 
into fraternity. A kingdom without artists, 
poets, or schools, but one whose graces be- 
spoke a beauty not of earth. A kingdom 
preached first by fishermen and prophesied 
by Roman statesmen to be the mutterings of 
insanity, but already counting in its ranks 
soldiers, tribunes, senators, and some of 
Caesar’s household, sending its ambassadors 
into every village, city, and metropolis of the 
known world, the conqueror of the Roman 
Empire, yet its Saviour, the destroyer of its 
crimes and vices, and the imperishable guar- 
dian of its ancient glory ! 

Christ’s Kingdom is not like man’s em- 
pire. Yon cannot subject it to analysis and 
scientific examination. It is like nature. 
You can map out the course of the stream, 
but not its secret. The whole of animal life 
retreats to an egg, but the shell of the egg 
contains a precipice and a chasm. 

Vegetation may be unwound like a spool 
of silk, until the seed is reached ; then comes 
a pause. Nature is the word “ Obedience,” 
spelling itself in rivers, plains and mountain 


264 Christ's Kingdom Contrasted with 

ranges. There is a concealed mind directing 
these multitudinous movements. The fields 
are like cups of incense. The rivers fall 
into the sea like notes from an immense 
harp. Every Sahara is a silent ecstasy. 
Continents, though widely separated, toil to- 
ward universal ends like the soldiers of 
Alexander. There is no discord, no rebel- 
lion, no protest from any of the ranks of 
existence. 

So it is with the Kingdom of God. The 
politician cannot behold it, the statesman 
cannot analyze it. Kings have laughed it to 
scorn, but God is not to be mocked. His 
Kingdom will come in spite of their feeble 
resistance. Every reformation quenched in 
one age breaks out fiercely in some other 
century. 

Did not Nero think he had destroyed the 
Christian religion, when he thronged the 
amphitheatre with Christians and with tar 
and pitch made them living crucifixions of 
fire? The light from those burning bodies 
illuminates the world now. 

Instead of the midnight of Africa, put in 
the morning star of Germany. Instead of 
the twilight of Egypt, put in the dawn of 
Europe. Instead of the clouds and darkness 


the Roman Empire ; The Fact . 265 

of the Roman Empire, put in the noonday of 
the American Republic — and you have the 
world’s map as it was and as it is. 

This is one chapter of history written by 
the Kingdom of God. To-morrow another 
chapter will have begun. Men are still 
pleading. 

Take Victor Hugo’s great work — Les 
Miserables — what is it? It is a terrific in- 
dictment of society as it is. The vices of the 
city, harlots, vagabonds, paupers, murders, 
thefts, battlefields, jails and scaffolds — these 
are hideously outlined in tragic form. It is 
man as man that produces these monstros- 
ities. Society is at fault, is the startling cry 
of that great book. Society, as society, is 
inhuman, savage in its hatreds, and barbar- 
ous in its judgments. 

Hugo pleads for intelligence, for mercy, 
for humanity. He would not simply punish 
the offender at law, but bring to the crim- 
inal the hope of social and moral redemp- 
tion. Justice has been a mockery, says this 
prophet; let us try forgiveness. Instead of 
the dungeon and the scaffold, let society, in 
patience and love, try to lift up the manhood 
in the man. Hugo places the rags of the 
streets against the door of the palace and 


266 Christ's Kingdom Contrasted with 


cries — “ Have pity, this is hunger ! ” He re- 
bukes the classes for separation from the 
masses. He invokes the Church to cease its 
periodical chanting and prayer-making and 
sermon-listening, and attempt the profound 
task of destroying the social hells of the 
times. 

Victor Hugo’s great work is a poet’s effort 
to set to music the Sermon on the Mount. 
He tries to make morality a reality. What 
a tragedy it is to contemplate the fact that 
nearly two thousand years have passed away 
and that sermon is still in a book, a matter 
of words! Lift the throne, lift society, lift 
the world of trade, lift the age, and place 
these ponderous structures upon the Sermon 
of the Mount, and time shall be no more ; the 
Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. This is 
Hugo’s passionate plea to the nineteenth 
century. 

Hugo exaggerates nothing, — in the dis- 
tance is another voice crying, 

Look at Jerusalem, the Holy City! 

Its poets, prophets, kings, the wonder of 
the world, yet there stands The Nazarene, 
looking down upon that London of Pales- 
tine, that superb New York of the Orient, 
that Paris of ancient civilization, in tears. 


the Roman Empire; The Fact. 267 

Is there no word of eulogy for its arts, tem- 
ples, its magnificent past? Nothing but 
tears. He wept once at the grave of a 
friend. Now over this colossal city, glor- 
ious with a thousand years of history, He 
weeps again. Why? Because it too is dead. 
The gorgeous architecture of its streets in 
His vision became the mournful splendors of 
a tomb. Why was Jerusalem dead? Be- 
cause it was externally cultured and inter- 
nally corrupt. It had religion in the temple, 
but not in its heart. These were the causes 
of those tears which fell like rain over that 
beautiful but doomed city. And those tears 
should crystalize into prophetic thunders of 
warning over every Jerusalem of our times, 
whether surnamed London, New York, 
Paris or Chicago! 

Men have founded states, but no one ever 
dreamed of establishing a state large 
enough to embrace all races. Great lawgiv- 
ers have appeared, but not to give laws to 
the world. Men have defended empires, but 
never thought of putting forth effort in de- 
fense of the rights of humanity. The most 
daring dream of a politician never reached 
into centuries. Indeed, no statesman has 
been able to outline a policy that would 


268 Christ's Kingdom Contrasted with 

stand the test of the needs of his own time. 
Even prophets have not attemped to create 
a religious system that would sweep from 
age to age. 

Christ was never in Asia, — from nothing 
He ever said did He know of the existence 
of the civilized nations outside of Judea. 
He did not know what great men were liv- 
ing or had lived. From nothing He says did 
He seem to know what plans had been tried, 
succeeded or failed; yet He comes forth 
from a carpenter’s bench and attempts what 
no one ever before had even conceived of, — 
the building of a universal empire, an em- 
pire that would last as long as time and 
would embrace earth’s races. And this, not 
through the use of any instrument employed 
by statesmen or kings. His plan involves 
this God-like conception of lifting the races 
of mankind into communion and fellowship 
with Angels, through the Cross. 

The visions of the Jewish prophets, — the 
Holy Jerusalem, — which John saw descend- 
ing from the skies, — the political dream of 
More’s Utopia, — the social ideals drawn by 
Edward Bellamy, the theories of a golden 
age, which stir our times with political 
thunder gusts, called revolutions, even our 


the Roman Empire ; The Fact. 269 

scholarly definitions of Heaven and the life 
immortal, constitute a Greek chorus to 
Christ’s vision of “ The New Kingdom.” 

Was this a vision? No, He actualized it 
in His life. His apostles and disciples, the 
Church Militant, are the shining of its walls. 
It is a kingdom without a parliament or sen- 
ate, without a policy, without even diplo- 
macy. An earthly king dies and the 
scepter passes to another. He gave His dis- 
ciples no discretionary power. None were 
to occupy the throne but Himself. Empires 
perish. He said, “ Heaven and earth shall 
pass away, but not my words.” An empire 
is local; this was to be universal. An em- 
pire needs the defense of armed men. His is 
built like a flower upon the principle of non- 
resistance. 

Here is a kingdom at open war with 
earthly states; that makes no allowance for 
human ignorance, weakness or passion ; that 
contradicts natural instincts, age-old cus- 
toms and institutions; that gives to a king 
no other privileges than to a slave; that 
draws no arrogant distinctions between the 
sexes ; that puts no wall between the respect- 
able and the outcast; that offers to a way- 
ward child as much as to a genius ; that has 


270 The Roman Empire ; The Fact. 

no favoritism for climate, condition of civili- 
zation or racial pre-eminence, yet a kingdom 
that, during its twenty centuries of exist- 
ence, has never excited a protest nor a re- 
bellion among His subjects. 


CHAPTER XIII. 


CHRISTIAN AND PAGAN MORALS. 

Propositions. 

1. No man has ever succeeded in winning 
the love of men except he imitated Christ’s 
spirit. 

2. No great man has offered himself as a 
substitute for Christ as a standard of right 
and wrong. 

3. No man who repudiated the teachings 
of Christ has ever unfolded into a beautiful 
manhood. 

4. In twenty centuries no reform that did 
not aim to make men Christ-like, has had 
abiding influence. 

5. No man except Christ has offered him- 
self as the test of civilization. 

6. No man or group of men has lifted a 
savage race into civilization except upon the 
principles of Christ. The teachings of skep- 
ticism in Africa would only deepen its 
frightful savagery. 

7. Jesus Christ is to-day the test of the 
truth in other religions. 


272 


Christian and Pagan Morals. 


8. He is the test of true greatness in the 
lives of great men. 

9. Christ taught men the secret of a holy 
life and claimed that with the knowledge of 
Himself as the Way, Truth, and Life, all 
false opinions and systems would disappear. 

10. Great martyrs excite our pity and 
compassion. But when Christ was before 
Pilate, we pity Pilate, we pity the soldiers 
and Judas, we pity ourselves; and at the 
cross, humanity stands amazed, expectant, 
not knowing whether or not the earth will 
fall back into chaos, before a judgment of 
dreadful condemnation. 

Men find fault with Christ in that He did 
not give the world a system of morals in 
logical outline. Is nature so? Do we find 
rigid, hard outlines of physical law nailed 
against the sky? God conceals the harsh- 
ness of law behind beauty. 

Any grass blade has wrapped up within it, 
color, symmetry, perfume ; yet there are also 
hints of physical law. So Christ puts moral 
duty here, there, wherever emergencies 
arise. In every act of Christ you will find 
behind the beautiful benevolence, stern, in- 
flexible moral law. He pointed out the 
privileges of a higher life, but the moment 


Christian and Pagan Morals. 


273 


you attempt living the higher life, you find 
under your feet granite blocks of law. 

The story of Jacob asleep, his head rest- 
ing on a stone pillow, and the subsequent 
vision of angels, is a profound religious 
truth. The soft pillows of luxury, ease, 
moral indifference, intellectual indolence, 
are not the conditions for spiritual visions. 
Duty performed, righteousness as a fact, 
strict integrity in our dealings with God, 
are the rock pillows whence are visioned the 
angels. 

The old moralists looked upon man from 
speculative standpoints. What is man? was 
the great question. They counted his bones 
and mapped his intellect, and, after satisfy- 
ing its curiosity, philosophy abandoned 
man, spread its wings, and began the inves- 
tigation of the universe. Man was regarded 
simply as a pulsed clod, without any rela- 
tion to the universe at large. 

Christ reversed this. He began with man 
and ended with man. He regarded man as 
the culmination of earth and its spiritual 
explanation. Man is the final cause of the 
earth’s exisetnce. Man is the fallen world. 
Christ’s aim was to lift the human world 
back into its orbit of holiness. 


274 


Christian and Pagan Morals . 


This is not a world of accident. “ The very 
hairs of your head are numbered,” Christ 
said, which means that in God’s sight noth- 
ing about man is insignificant or trifling. If 
every hair of the head is sacred, every act of 
man has age- wide significance ; therefore 
every man is worth more than the world in 
the moral universe. 

A flower has material form and founda- 
tion, but the difference between a clod and a 
violet is spiritual. There is no material dif- 
ference. The beauty, the childish grace, the 
symmetry revealed in the violet, are spir- 
itual values. God uses a clod as a channel 
to let those spiritual facts portray them- 
selves. There is no material difference be- 
tween a man’s body and an ash heap, but in 
man we find thought, will, conscience, affec- 
tion. God intended man to be a majesty, 
through which these forces should be dis- 
played. But here the illustration breaks 
down. A violet is limited by its nature, by 
a certain capacity for unfolding perfume, 
beauty and perfection. Now take the word 
“ Holiness ” and place it in the presence of 
man. How much holiness is man able to ex- 
press. How much of the divine nature can 
man partake? There are no limits. Christ 


Christian and Pagan Morals. 


275 


made morality have an immortal outreach. 
He said, “ Be perfect as your Father in 
Heaven is perfect ; ” as if He had said that 
moral development is absolutely limitless. 
“ Perfect as the Father ” — what possibili- 
ties! In nature all the elements of sun, 
atmosphere, and rain operate upon each 
tree, as if it were the only tree in the world. 
A forest of a million trees reveals that each 
tree is reverenced by nature as though it 
were the king. Nature makes no distinc- 
tion, whether the tree be oak, pine or cedar, 
a weed or a moonflower — all the enginery of 
nature’s multiplied forces are brought to 
bear persistently, and with intelligent 
action, upon each tree for its noblest devel- 
opment. The old moralists tried to recon- 
struct men in aggregations, from national or 
racial standpoints. They failed because 
they contradicted natural law. Christ re- 
turned to God’s method in nature. The 
method of Christ is the moral development 
of each Christian, no difference of what 
race, sex or condition. Christ treats each 
man as nature treats each tree, as though he 
were the only man in the world. All the 
divine forces of God are put into operation 
upon Simon, the crude fisherman, as upon 


276 


Christian and Pagan Morals. 


Saul, the intellectual prodigy of Tarsus. 
The whole Church, the entire Bible, the full- 
ness of God's spirit are promised you as an 
individual, no difference who you are or 
what you are. The pagan overlooked the 
fact, that only in man's nature exist infinite 
possibilities. The pagan saw the immov- 
able hills, the everlasting stretch of sky, 
while generations of human beings passed 
away like dreams. But man must not be 
measured against nature. Why? The 
mountains cannot expand, nor may the skies 
be increased an inch. But human nature is 
capable of limitless unfolding. 

Between the mind of an Esquimau and 
that of Plato, there is a difference greater 
than that between the moon and Jupiter, 
but a distance that can be reduced by a uni- 
versity. 

Saul of Tarsus and Paul the Apostle are 
as wide apart as hate and love. In one 
radiant hour that eternity is bridged. Such 
an action in nature is simply impossible. It 
would be like unlocking a noonday out of 
the midnight. But that which is impossible 
in nature, is possible in man. This hint of 
man's worth, the pagan priest overlooked. 


Christian and Pagan Morals. 


277 


It is only a hint, a crack in the wall, but the 
morning creeps through that small crevice. 
So through this hint we behold the shining 
of God. 

“ In God man lives and moves and has his 
being.” Man is a partial revelation of God, 
just as God is the full revelation of man. 
God is spirit, man is spirit. Pronounce these 
words, and the universe fades away. Only 
two facts remain, — God, Man ! God, the in- 
finite, in Christ becoming finite! Man, the 
finite, through Christ, measuring toward the 
infinite. Such a sublime truth heathen re- 
ligions could not grasp. 

The old moralists laid emphasis upon mor- 
ality in man, simply as an earthly being, 
while Christianity declared that man must 
act in relation to the fact, that man and 
earth are integral parts of the universe. 

So we see in Christianity the principle 
that a man’s moral life is tested by relation- 
ships to the universe of being. Then the uni- 
verse takes the place of earth, eternity takes 
the place of time, the infinite takes the place 
of the finite. In the Christ-life we see this 
thought amplified. He lived not the life of 
a man, but as the Son of God. He was the 


278 


Christian and Pagan Morals. 


ideal life for all worlds. He lived not in 
time, but in the eternities. That is, He lived 
in the finite for infinite ends. 

No system of morals ever attempted to 
bring the individual, the family, society, and 
the state into orchestral harmony. Chris- 
tianity does this. The spirit of Christ so 
profoundly influences the individual that his 
moral life permeates these manifold rela- 
tionships. 

The old moralists made duty a limited act, 
limited by race, conditions, and environ- 
ment. The Greek did not feel any obliga- 
tion toward the Jew. The Himalaya moun- 
tains limited the Asiatic in moral relation- 
ships. Athens w~as the boundary line for the 
Greek. Jerusalem was the closed gate of 
Jewish obligation. The ethics of Seneca 
never breached the Roman wall. In one 
breath Christ swept the Asiatic, Athenian, 
Jewish, and Roman civilizations into the 
sea. He said, “ Love the Universal Father 
and Universal Man as thou lovest thyself.” 

Paganism exhausted itself in the finite. 
The Pagan felt and said when the great 
Platos and Homers had passed away, — “ The 
Golden Age is past.” Mankind had reached 
and passed the splendid heights of life. 


Christian and Pagan Morals. 279 

But hundreds of years after this came the 
Christ, showing that human nature was only 
in its infancy. Looking at the God-man, 
what a prophecy we see revealed! The 
Homers, Miltons, and Shakespeares are 
only the child-songs of the race. Angelo, 
Rubens, and Phidias are fading canvases. 
Plato, Humboldt, Columbus represent the 
genesis of human thinking; the Psalms are 
yet to be written. The world’s libraries and 
universities contain only the stutterings and 
stammerings of the past. The world’s 
thrones and empires for thousands of years 
represent feeble attempts to meet God’s 
Kingdom, which, since time began, has been 
descending from the skies. What is the 
proof? God does not make use of the past. 
The glory of this morning bears no trace of 
yesterday’s painting in its sky. The sunset 
of to-day, where an Angel paused to glance 
at the earth, is as gorgeous as any beheld on 
earth. Each spring new foliage and new 
music; autumn and winter are as strange 
and as thrilled with mystery as to the first 
man ; and in this eternal procession of days, 
God walks! 

Upon this fact we build the faith- joy of 
the present hour. Our modern poets, kneel- 


280 


Christian and Pagan Morals. 


ing in the forest depths or upon the ocean 
shore, do not hear simply divine voices 
breaking the silence, as did the pagan poets. 
Our poets catch messages from God to com- 
fort man. Our scientists, not content with 
academic classifications of facts, are com- 
pelling rocks, lilies, and rivers to open their 
lips and speak to man of hope. Our his- 
torians are discovering, underneath the bat- 
tlefields and ruins of states, the footprints 
of a divine order and purpose. The school- 
boy of to-day can, from the morning news- 
paper, point out the holy tendency in these 
times. 

The belief in paganism in the Golden Age 
of the past is disastrous. Why? If the 
noblest conditions existed yesterday, and we 
are in worse condition to-day, then we are 
going from good to bad, and from bad to 
worse. This is the law of decay. It unwings 
hope, it disrupts virtue, it blindfolds truth, 
and granite fatalism blocks the chariots of 
progress. 

Christianity introduced into the world the 
creative idea of a new kingdom, a new peo- 
ple, and a new day. It said, “ Old things are 
passed away. All things are become new.” 
It was this thought that cleared the poisoned 


Christian and Pagan Morals. 


281 


atmosphere of pagan despair. Again the 
pulse of humanity began to throb with 
health. Literature revived, and the poet 
thrilled his harp with the joy of optimism. 
Philosophy became medicinal, and races sur- 
rendered to vices and degradation put forth 
gigantic efforts toward moral redemption. 

The picture of the Angel putting a sword 
into the hand of the Maid of Orleans is not 
poetry. Every moral reformation is condi- 
tioned upon humanity’s accepting the sword 
and vision of Heavenly ideals. 

One cause of pagan decay was the belief 
that the history of humanity moved in cir- 
cles. Paganism saw no forward, no upward 
movement. Events were mere happenings. 
Explanations of human genius and of 
states and their movements were attributed 
to accidents. Accident and chance as 
causes left the future an enigma. Christian- 
ity replaced chance as a cause, with the 
great thought that providence is ruling the 
world for lofty purposes; that God is pa- 
tient and waits ; that ages are to Him as one 
day; that disasters are school-rooms; that 
falls of empires are warnings against cor- 
ruption ; that the Maker of the world is toil- 
ing, slowly but victoriously, toward the de- 


282 


Christian and Pagan Morals. 


velopment of a perfect earth and a perfect 
humanity. 

The best solution the pagan schools 
offered, in trying to attain virtue in a world 
so full of ignorance, vice, and wickedness, 
was the abandonment of the world itself. 
Hence the Stoic, the hermit, the scholarly re- 
cluse. He gave up the world to meditate 
upon goodness. It was the Stoic who was 
the first to cross swords with Christianity. 

What was the Stoic’s solution of life? 
“ Let fame, money, health, life itself, all be 
considered as trifles.” What about the 
problem of evil? “ Let reason tell you what 
is right; let the will save you from doing 
wrong ! ” 

The Stoic’s solution of life was “ Repres- 
sion ! ” His sympathy was frosty as a De- 
cember wind. In the Stoic’s heart dreams of 
revolution met no response. He frescoed the 
ceilings of his thought with gorgeous color- 
ings, while his actual life gangrened with 
materialism. Upon the Stoic’s creed brave 
words strutted like kings. Seneca could 
preach about liberty, but under the crimson 
robe of his boasting, a chain clanked. Even 
Seneca crawled like a whipped slave at the 
feet of Nero. The Stoic gloried in his isola- 


Christian and Pagan Morals. 


283 


tion, yet kept his banishment gilded with 
the gold of civilization. In public he was 
robed in the skin of a lion ; in the secret of 
his sorrow he whimpered like an un weaned 
fox. The blood beating drums in the temple 
of his brain was not a battle charge, but a 
retreat against the enemies of human life. 

Stoicism said, “ Crush the emotions. Make 
the heart adamant. Make the will iron. Anni- 
hilate every human joy !” Stoicism was for 
the individual; Christianity is for the fam- 
ily. The Stoic tried to make himself vir- 
tuous ; Christianity would make the world 
righteous. The Stoic said, “ Imitate great 
men ; ” Christ said, “ Be perfect as your 
Father in Heaven is perfect.” Stoicism fur- 
nished no moral guide. No Stoic ever arose 
before men and said as Christ said, “ I am 
the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” The 
Stoic was a self-contained man, exclusive as 
the Jewish Pharisee, and indifferent to the 
ills of the world as a funeral hearse. 

The Stoic ! Behold him in his degeneracy ! 
A man who rejected the soldiership of ideals 
for the sake of definitions. A man who un- 
starred truths from the sky and lost them 
in a chaos of words. A man who never wor- 
shipped, except before the emblazoned altar 


284 


Christian and Pagan Morals. 


of a great occasion. A man who preached 
the unity of races behind a wall of caste; 
who taught fraternity and poisoned friend- 
ship with treason; who wept over a poem 
and tortured slaves for amusement; who 
eulogized benevolence and was a self-damned 
miser ; who rebuked luxury with fingers pur- 
ple with gluttony; who scourged the sepul- 
chre with witticisms as long as he was in 
good health; who sceptered his lusts with 
sovereignty, upon the plea that they were 
natural ; who drove his conscience into exile 
and made his will, his reason, his self-love, 
the proud triumvirate to rule his destiny. 
The Stoic said — “ Let my will be done.” 
Christ from the cross said — “ Let Thy will 
be done.” These simple words differen- 
tiate Christianity from all school-room 
theories. 

There is one word singular to Christian- 
ity, in reference to morality, — that word is 
“ Grace.” God gives the individual grace, 
so he can live nobly. The imparting of 
grace, the divine gift, is the peculiar genius 
of Christianity. 

Grace and the Holy Spirit enable sinful 
men to live righteously. It was this marvel 
that astounded the pagans. A corrupt 


Christian and Pagan Morals. 


285 


pagan became a Christian and at once a new 
and holy life began. Even the rack and tor- 
ture were unable to make that man sin. It 
was God’s grace that constituted this vic- 
tory. 

That is the new power which Christianity 
offered. “ God’s grace,” which means di- 
vine strength to reinforce conscience, to 
strengthen the will, to open the eyes of the 
intellect. The man Saul of Tarsus, when 
morally blind, assists at the murder of 
Stephen ; but when he receives God’s grace, 
the scales fall from his eyes, and he becomes 
a universal apostle of righteousness. 

God’s grace, then, is the strange, new and 
mighty force in history. Under its reign dis- 
graced w omen are redeemed. Immoral men 
become righteous. The streets of sin are 
purged, and the w r hole social and political 
life of the modern world has been revolution- 
ized. It is God’s grace that did it, not pro- 
gress, reform, or civilization. 


CHAPTER XIV. 


CHRISTIANITY AND PAGAN RELIGIONS. 

Propositions. 

I. Wherever we find man, we find relig- 
ion ; therefore religion is necessary for man. 

II. No religion of nature satisfies man. 
Africa is the proof. The continent of 
Africa is the most marvelous country upon 
the globe. Her mountains are cloud palaces. 
Her rivers are mysteries. Her forests are 
like seas. Her deserts are tombs for races. 
But the African mind has not been able to 
formulate a single religious idea rooted in 
nature that the world has accepted. 

III. Morality without religion is not suffi- 
cient. China is the proof. Chinese civiliza- 
tion has for its soul a moral theory. Con- 
fucius is the human wall around China. 
But China presents to us the contradiction 
of an empire ruled by moral theories, an em- 
pire whose cities are the most indecent in 
the modern world. 

IV. Man cannot, through speculation, 
find out God. India is the proof. The Hindu 
priest is the intellectual prodigy of earth 


Christianity and Pagan Religions. 287 

and time. But the doctrines of God and 
man, and their inter-relationship, doctrines 
expounded by Hindu priests after centuries 
of speculations, these doctrines have not 
been accepted by the Occidental world. 

V. Culture without religion is not suffi- 
cient for man. Athens is the proof. Greek 
civilization was built upon a school-house, 
and is now a memory. 

VI. No governmental theory has ever 
taken the place of religion and solved the 
moral problems of the race. The Roman 
Empire is the proof. Rome passed through 
centuries of political experiment. Every 
throne theory of government known to his- 
tory was reared upon the banks of the 
Tiber; but Rome is the overwhelming evi- 
dence that statutes, jurisprudence, states- 
manship do not satisfy man. 

VII. Man has a capacity to know God, 
but is unable to know Him without a revela- 
tion. Will God reveal Himself to man? 
Jesus of Nazareth is the answer. There are 
two things that must be considered regard- 
ing Christianity. First, — all other religions 
are similar in content and genius. Chris- 
tianity is unlike any other world religion, 
or all combined. This proves, first, — that 


288 Christianity and Pagan Religions. 


Christianity was not made by man; second, 
— that Christianity is not the evolution of 
older religions into a more perfect form. 

It was said of Jesus, “ He was the founder 
of a religion.” Strictly speaking, this is not 
true. Search His utterances; how often do 
we find the word “ Religion ” ? His theme 
was “ Life.” Christianity as an interpreta- 
tion of life, and therefore a religion, is un- 
conditioned. It does not rest upon a priest- 
hood; nor upon an ecclesiastical system 
called the church ; nor upon an ethical 
theory ; nor a political vision. Christianity 
rests upon Christ. 

It is not necessary to have any personal 
relationship with Confucius, Buddha, or 
Moses, to be a disciple of the religion that 
each represents. But to be a Christian, a 
man must know Christ through personal 
fellowship. For a Unitarian to say 
that he is a “ Christian,” is a contradiction 
in terms. Personal fellowship with Christ 
as God , is the secret of Christian disciple- 
ship. Either that, or Thomas’s great excla- 
mation, “ My Lord and my God,” is blas- 
phemy. 

Christ’s actions and His doctrines inter- 


Christianity and Pagan Religions. 289 

lock. If we had not one word that Christ 
ever uttered, but had in the Gospels a pic- 
ture of Christ’s deeds, we could deduce from 
His deeds, the doctrines He preached. His 
miracles were His sermons in action. His 
religion does not eradicate human instincts. 
It yokes each one under moral restraint. He 
taught eating and drinking, but not the 
voluptuousness of Epicureanism. He taught 
self-denial, without the viciousness of 
Stoicism. He taught self-sacrifice, but not 
the Asiatic doctrine of self-torture. He 
taught holy living, but not asceticism. He 
made ministers, but not monks. His religion 
includes men, women and children, upon the 
same plane of moral responsibility. 

It is a religion of revelation, like that of 
Judaism; a religion of self-sacrifice and self- 
realization, like that of India ; a religion for 
the present hour, like that of China ; a relig- 
ion of reconciliation, like that of Persia; a 
religion in which God is infinitely distant, 
like that of Egypt ; a religion in which God 
is infinitely near to man, like that of Greece ; 
it is a religion of law and statesmanship, 
like that of Home. 

But here all resemblance ends. 

It is a “ Gospel,” that is, “ Good News to 


290 Christianity and Pagan Religions. 


the common people.” Every doctrine is a 
palace of hope. It builds its temples upon 
the graves of slain passions. It gives the 
humbler virtues crowns of gold. It makes 
worship social; it makes it a divine fellow- 
ship. Its theory of life is workable. It ex- 
alts defeat and suffering into stepping 
stones to a larger faith. It puts a ban upon 
the bloody ax of mob revolution, but exalts 
reformation. It teaches men how to die 
unto self and unto the world, and yet master 
both. 

While spiritual, it keeps warm, sympa- 
thetic hands on practical life. It is intoler- 
ant toward the smallest sin, yet welcomes 
the self-abandoned of both sexes. It is a re- 
ligion of mystery, but leaves no question un- 
answered that is vital to man’s welfare as 
an immortal being. 

All religions, all philosophies, all sciences, 
propound one question : Who and what is 
God? He gave the final answer, “ Our 
Father.” He swept idolatry from the earth 
in a single sentence when He said, “ Wor- 
ship God in Spirit and in Truth.” 

All religions are rich in sacred rites and 
ceremonies. Christianity contains but two, 
— Baptism, and the Lord’s Supper. 


Christianity and Pagan Religions. 291 


His doctrines are true in all religions. His 
doctrines explain other religions. From the 
mountain crests of Christian philosophy, 
you can understand any religion in the 
world. 

Christianity is so inclusive, it includes the 
truths of all religions. In that it is like the 
ocean; it includes the rivers. The paradox 
is, it is so exclusive that it excludes other re- 
ligions as religions. Like the ocean, it can- 
not be put into a river. Is not Christianity 
historically rooted in Judaism? How could 
Christianity be put back in Judaism? 
Whenever we understand the process by 
which we can take the oak of an hundred 
years and thrust it back into the seed, then 
we can give the answer. When you try to 
amalgamate Christianity with any other re- 
ligion, you destroy it. Christianity is all, or 
nothing. It asks nothing from other relig- 
ions, and surrenders nothing to them. 

All that He said that we have any record 
of, can be put upon a few pages; yet He 
never omitted to teach one duty or relation- 
ship between man and man, and between 
man and God. He never contradicted a re- 
ligious truth that was in existence before He 
came. If this be simply a Jewish peasant, 


292 Christianity and Pagan Religions. 


how would He know what had been taught 
in schools hundreds, nay even thousands of 
years before His birth? 

The archaeologist in recent years has over- 
turned the deserts, and we are now reading 
the stone tablets, the libraries that belonged 
to civilizations ten, fifteen and twenty thou- 
sand years ago. But no religious truth has 
ever been found, taught by the schools or the 
priesthoods of distant centuries, that Christ 
ever contradicted. 

He went further ; He completed every half 
religious truth then in existence. 

When Pilate said, — “ What is Truth ?” — 
it was the natural mind asking the question. 
There is no Pilate now to ask, “ What is 
Truth?” because there is no half-religious 
truth in the world to-day. 

Also, He anticipated every social, politi- 
cal, moral and religious truth that has been 
taught in the last twenty centuries. No 
statesman, no sociologist, no ethical teacher, 
no priest or theologian has been able to pro- 
claim a truth that belonged to these various 
realms, but can be found, rooted like a rain- 
bow, in something Christ said. 

Bring the skeptic’s creed, — not that which 
he denies. Negations do not make a creed. 


Christianity and Pagan Religions. 293 

Submit what he affirms. Every skeptic has 
taught beautiful and holy principles, but no 
moral or religious principle has been pro- 
claimed from Celsus to Ingersoll, but can be 
found anticipated in Christ’s teachings. 

That the world religions were man-made is 
proven by the fact that they are capable of 
vast modification. Take India and China for 
example. We find there development. Chris- 
tianity is always the same. The form of the 
Church may change, but not the spirit of 
Christianity. 

The old religions were profound attempts 
to know God. China, India, Persia, and 
Egypt represent progress in the knowledge 
of God. But the lacking element was to love 
God, and because this was lacking, love be- 
tween man and man was an unknown prin- 
ciple. 

These religions are partial in their out- 
reach. In China, religion only vitally 
touches the Emperor, the Imperial Family. 
It influences a priestly cast in India, the 
wise men of Persia, the classes in Egypt. 
The millions are left unaffected. Christian- 
ity reaches into every caste and class of life. 
It affects kings and peasants; it is a relig- 
ion for scholars and slaves; it is a religion 


294 Christianity and Pagan Religions. 


for a child, a woman, or man, of every de- 
gree of culture or lack of culture. 

These religions did not bring righteous- 
ness to the state. Christianity affects the 
state powerfully. In the history of the 
world, not a state has disappeared because 
of Christianity, while ponderous empires 
have disappeared under the influence of the 
primitive religions. 

None of these religions relieved the bond- 
age and disgrace of labor. It found men 
slaves and left them slaves. The history of 
Christianity is wrapped up in few words. It 
made the slave into a serf, then into a citi- 
zen ; and now, in America, because of 
Christianity, the highest political office is 
open to the poorest man of the Republic. 

Every religion has been modified when 
introduced into a land dominated by other 
religions. Buddhism was modified in 
China, and the morals of Confucius were 
modified in Japan. Ofttimes these religions 
amalgamate. Also, no religion has ever 
been able to resist the constraining power 
exerted by the customs and traditions of 
an alien people. Christianity has never 
undergone modification, although it has 


Christianity and Pagan Religions. 295 

been introduced into every corner of the 
world. 

The old religions affected only the better 
classes. They never influenced the masses, 
the criminal elements, and the abandoned. 
But the first outreach of Christianity was 
among these very elements. 

All these religions had moral systems, but 
not one inspired generations of men to 
actual nobility of life. 

Every religion was conditioned upon the 
destruction of some natural element in 
human nature. In China, the intellectual 
element is crushed. In India, religion slew 
the political instincts. In Egypt, religion 
stifled the conscience. Christianity gives to 
political life, liberty and moral develop- 
ment, while to the soul life of man it offers 
Christ, the whole Church, and infinite pos- 
sibilities. 

The Oriental religions contain truths so 
mysterious and profound that the common 
people could not understand them. The 
truths of Christianity, which create univer- 
sities, are so simple that the common people 
hear them gladly. 

Any one of these religions was superior 


296 Christianity and Pagan Religions. 


to the others in certain respects. China was 
an advance over Africa; India outranks 
China; Egypt gave loftier systems than In- 
dia; Greece surpassed Egypt. But Chris- 
tianity is supreme, because it is the full 
revelation of God. Christ’s definition of 
God stands without change or development. 

These old religions were not able to har- 
monize with the truths of other religions. 
Each demanded precedence, in order to live. 
Christianty is the inclusive religion. It de- 
stroys nothing but evil. Christianity has 
never rejected a truth ever discovered by 
man. 

Not one of these religions brings into sub- 
jection the brain, heart, conscience, and 
will of man, at once and powerfully. 
Christianity affects the whole nature of 
man, as springtime does the earth. 

They were religions for climates and 
races, not for humanity. Each propagated 
itself by the force of a superior priesthood, 
not by the regal majesty of truth. They 
tried to regulate, they could not remedy 
social and political evils. They could not 
adjust themselves to inventions, discoveries, 
new systems of science and philosophy. 

The Gentile religions represented only 


Christianity and Pagan Religions. 297 

the past. Each was a sphinx. No solutions 
for the present hour ever breathed from its 
stony lips. 

These religions have absolutely no in- 
fluence upon the modern world. Does 
China mould the thought of Germany? Has 
England knelt at Buddha’s shrine? What 
has Persia given France? Are Egypt’s tem- 
ples building in America? 

Each religion was established by a per- 
son ; it did not rest upon personality. 

Each had a system of doctrines, but not 
one boasted a person the living incarnation 
of its doctrines. 

They were sublime speculations ; they 
lacked absoluteness in dogma. Christianity 
is not subject to one of these limitations, a 
fact which proves that it was not invented 
by the mind of man. 

The old world religions are like the 
floods of Niagara, a vision of living waters, 
terminating in a whirlpool. Niagara! 
There in the foreground is a bewildering 
imagery of forests, cliffs, and islands, the 
shores girdled with rock, covered with foam, 
and wreathed in spray. Above, the firma- 
ment is like a terrible crystal, — below, the 
waters move, pouring their wine of wrath 


298 Christianity and Pagan Religions. 


into that gulf. It would not seem that mor- 
tal man could look upon that scene and 
live! 

A spirit rises from that gulf, wearing the 
cloud as a garment, upon its head a rain- 
bow, — a rainbow resplendent there before 
the pyramids were built, a rainbow destined 
to adorn the music of that flood, when 
countless centuries have perished amid its 
gorgeous colorings. Hark to the tumult and 
the shoutings! These are the voices of the 
Great Lakes bursting from those granite 
lips in oratorios. Behind that rainbow 
hangs the everlasting flood of waters, a rush 
of foam and tide, a mass of living emerald, 
columned there in billowy splendor, the 
storm of an ocean, suspended from a preci- 
pice! Only when some burning mountain 
has been flung into the sea, can the fury of 
that gulf be equalled. Destruction, sister of 
Chaos, is horsed upon that foam in full- 
orbed sovereignty! 

But far below and beyond the plunge of 
the cataract is the whirlpool; that whirl- 
pool is the tragedy of Niagara. Here there 
is no sound. The surge of waters moves 
resistlessly but silently. That angel spirit 
hath now into a demon turned. Each wave 


Christianity and Pagan Religions. 299 


is false as a Judas oatli. The sea gives up 
its dead, but not this whirlpool. This con- 
stitutes its horror ! Masked under the inno- 
cence of sleep, is death, — death without the 
mercy of a tomb ! 

There in the background of the ages are 
the old world religions like lakes, concen- 
trating their forces. You hear the thunder 
of conflict of these ancient systems, rolling 
above granitic schools and temples. But, 
after all, these religions terminate in a 
whirlpool. The movement is not forward, 
but in a circle, and the whirlpool silence is 
unbroken by reforms or revolutions. The 
people, like foam-drops, fall back into a 
dreadful lethargy. 

Asia is Niagara, but also above Niagara 
is arched the rainbow. So, above the relig- 
ions of the Orient is being arched the vision 
of Jesus Christ, the prophecy and the 
pledge that never again shall the world fall 
back into the fatalism, the lethargy, the 
moral paralysis of the Orient 

But the Gentile religions and systems 
were not false. As Paul said, they were 
schoolmasters preparing the way for Christ. 
They were used of God to exhaust the genius 
of man in human plans of redemption. And 


300 Christianity and Pagan Religions. 

when savagery became barbarism and bar- 
barian civilization, then came the golden 
age, then evening, twilight, night, and then 
“ The Sun of Righteousness.” For the 
proof, — imagine yourself standing upon 
some mountain summit in Africa. In Africa, 
because only amid this midnight can you 
understand the dawn, noonday, and twilight 
of a man-made civilization. 

The dawn is in Asia. Slowly upon those 
plains we see the separation of the human 
family into races : the Turanian race, which 
hardly exists now ; the Semitic, which again 
divides into the Arabic, Syrian, and 
Israelite ; and finally the ancient Aryan peo- 
ple, which rolled backward into India, then 
forward into Persia and Europe. Part of 
the Semitico-Aryan race migrates into the 
Valley of the Nile. Suddenly from that 
desert the pyramids begin to rise. 

Behold the vision of the Empires ! 

Egypt rises like a dream. Memphis is 
there in her granite robes ; Thebes with her 
hundred gates; and midway in the desert is 
the Sphinx, already crouched in the sand to 
watch the procession of the nations. Fol- 
lowing the empire of the pyramids, you be- 
hold the erection of the obelisks, which 


Christianity and Pagan Religions . 301 


marks a new dynasty. The Shepherd Kings 
have come and gone. We catch a glimpse of 
Abraham in his tent. The statue of 
Memnon greets with mysterious melody the 
rising sun. The nations are brought cap- 
tive to Menephtah. The Jewish race begins 
its mysterious march through the ages, and 
the imperialism of the Pharaohs, shattered 
by the war-chariots of rival kings, has fallen 
forever. 

Chaldea next assumes the robe of empire. 
Chaldea, daughter of a fourfold mother- 
hood: Arabia, Abyssinia, Egypt, Africa! 
When Asia was in a lethargy, this people 
sprang up in a night; laying the foundations 
of the home, the city, the State; spreading 
science and art into surrounding countries; 
creating arithmetic and astronomy, the 
twelve signs of the zodiac, — and with 
scarcely a monument to perpetuate her 
reign, Chaldea bows in the desert sand and 
oblivion. 

Assyria next uplifts her thrones, dom- 
inant for a thousand years. The morning 
light is breaking now. It was in this era 
that Moses climbed Mount Sinai. David 
attuned his harp. The blind Homer begs 
for bread, an immortal song upon his lips. 


302 Christianity and Pagan Religions. 


Babylon glows resplendently with monu- 
ments. Carthage rivals ancient Thebes in 
magnificence of temples. Elijah rebukes 
Ahab, and Isaiah thunders against tyrants. 
There stood Assyria with the passing of ten 
long centuries ; flaying her enemies and sell- 
ing their skins in the marts of trade; pur- 
loining science from Chaldea and teaching 
the world the art of empire. But the Scyth- 
ians came with their savagery. The Medes 
came with their armies. The story is done. 
Stand yonder where the moon throws 
her splendid light upon the valleys of that 
strangely enchanted land. Down in those 
weeds are the marble ruins of a myriad of 
palaces. The barbaric pomp and blaze of 
Assyria are being swept away by the river 
Tigris. 

Another empire rises upon our vision. It 
is Media, forever linked with the fortunes of 
Parthia and Persia. There upon the sculp- 
ture of Persepolis are engraved her annals. 
It is a story of primitive strength. Then 
came luxury, and with luxury, vices. Moral- 
ity disappeared. Art vanished. The scepter 
lost its power. Only shadows are there. 
But amid those shadows there is something 
more powerful than the crown of Assyria. 


Christianity and Pagan Religions. 303 


It is the vague outline of the idea of God, 
which Zoroaster afterward immortalized 
under the symbol of fire. 

Another nation takes its place in the pro- 
cession of empires, — Babylonia. Babylonia, 
celebrated for her indomitable ambitions, 
her unequalled heroism, her marts of trade. 
Walk the streets of Babylon, that great city ! 
Gaze upon her paintings, the temple of 
Belus, the hanging gardens, a prodigy plan- 
ned for a queen’s caprice, the gorgeous pal- 
aces built by captives swept from Phoenicia, 
Moab, and Assyria. Here is a kingdom 
built through conquest and established 
through princely inter-marriage. A kingdom 
holding the Jewish race in bondage nearly 
an hundred years. Suddenly, without ap- 
parent reason, that glorious nation crum- 
bles into dust. 

With Persia, the Orient completes its his- 
tory. Into Persia emptied the luxury, schol- 
arship, vices, and imperialism of the ancient 
world. A Cyrus for a monarch, a Zoroaster 
for a prophet. With one hand lifting the 
Jewish race back into supremacy, with the 
other rebuilding the streets of Babylon. In 
one moment rolling triumphant armies into 
India, in the next threatening the subjection 


304 Christianity and Pagan Religions. 


of Europe. But the Macedonians defeated 
the Persian hosts, Alexander trails their 
banners in the dust and smites the kingdom 
with paralysis. 

The Orient was a vision of empires; the 
Occident, a procession of men mightier than 
empires! Out from the darkness comes 
Solon the law giver, almost as powerful as 
Moses. Thespis inaugurates the drama, the 
first schoolroom for the common people. 
Pythagoras lays the foundations of modern 
science; then comes iEschylus, who was 
even greater than Shakespeare. Shakes- 
peare was content to have men speak as 
men, while ^Eschylus made his actors imper- 
sonate the sun, the ocean, the hurricane. 
Think of a poet who placed upon the lips of 
an actor the vast utterance of a volcano. His 
tragedies were so terrible that people fell 
stricken with delirium and death in the very 
midst of the theatre; while the loss of his 
hundred plays almost plunged the world 
into intellectual bankruptcy. 

Surely civilization has worn itself out in 
the creation of such colossi. No! There is 
Tyre, with the most powerful navies in the 
world, and there Jerusalem, glorified with 
the sun-risings of a thousand years. Then, 


Christianity and Pagan Religions . 305 


a group of giants : Xerxes, who reduced war 
to a science; Herodotus, the father of his- 
tory; Pericles, the Wendell Phillips of his 
time ; Phidias, who bequeathed his immortal 
genius to Michael Angelo; and then we are 
dumbfounded with amazement, for there 
stride from the darkness, Socrates, Plato, 
Aristotle ! Why, their very entrance was so 
terrific that Egypt disappeared. Asia suf- 
fered an eclipse, and then there unrolls be- 
fore our eyes a noonday of unutterable 
grandeur. Demosthenes comes to make 
speech more powerful than armies. Hanni- 
bal makes the Alps kneel to his triumphs. 
Euclid re-establishes mathematics. The 
Stoic and Epicurean schools are here. Rome 
conquers the world. Augustus Caesar is 
now upon the throne, Virgil repeats the song 
of Homer in magnificent Latin verse, and 
the golden age has come. 

The Golden Age! 

Thousands of years of men and empires 
were necessary to make the golden age possi- 
ble. Yet, after all, it proved to be an age of 
clay, an age of night, rather than of gold. 
For the proof, bring now the African, the 
man, the midnight of whose heart and brain 
darkens his face, into the presence of these 


306 Christianity and Pagan Religions. 


colossal men and systems, and let him pro- 
pound that heartrending question — “ Sirs, 
what must I do to be saved? ” And let them 
answer ! 

Buddha, where art thou? The Himalaya 
mountains lift their snows helplessly into 
the sky for answer — “ Gone ” ! Confucius? 
From the depths of the Chinese world there 
comes an echo, then a vast silence! Zoro- 
aster? Persia answers — “ He is not here ”! 
Pharaoh? A Sphinx, a pyramid, a waste of 
sand, no more ; the glory of Egypt has fallen ! 
Plato? The grass climbs the marble steps of 
the academy! Caesar? No triumphant 
moral voice thrills that darkness ! 

At last the expectant hour of human his- 
tory is come, “ The fullness of time.” The 
royal palaces were tombs. Imperialism fel- 
lowshipped with crime. Tyranny mocked 
the helpless cry of slaves. It was an age 
whose sins should have evoked the wrath of 
the Judgment Angel. 

Suddenly that night was transfigured 
with a star ; a manger cradles a Child upon 
whose kingly head there sat a God-like 
majesty; and at this very hour His disciples 
stand, before the regal tombs of the Orient, 


Christianity and Pagan Religions. 307 


and with trumps of resurrection they are 
crying, “ Come forth ! ” and obedient to that 
lofty cry, they come, wrapt in the grave- 
clothes of the dead, India from her 
lethargy, China from her sleep, Persia from 
the dust, Africa from the night, destined to 
wear the immortal crowns of Christ, “ The 
Fatherhood of God ” and “ The universal 
brotherhood of man ! ” 

Christ's Challenge to the Skeptic. 

“ Come unto me, all ye that labor and are 
heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” 

This is Christ’s challenge. 

The text means literally, ye who are 
overborne, exhausted, prostrate. It is ad- 
dressed to the doubting-Thomas type of 
mind. It is an invitation to the man who 
has grappled with soul problems and is in 
intellectual despair. 

There is no promise of solutions that 
shall be final. No mystery is to be ex- 
plained. Doubt is not to be slain. The 
solution He tenders is : “ Take my yoke 

upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek 
and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest 
unto your souls.” In other words, He 
affirmed that fellowship with Him brings 


308 Christianity and Pagan Religions. 

peace to the soul. The storm-swept sea of 
the mind becomes calm when the heart is 
close to the heart of God. 

The Christian is not one who has ceased 
to doubt, nor is it required that credulity 
shall be substituted for reason. Faith 
means now to accept as true, like a child, 
things that may be demonstrated and 
understood to-morrow when one has become 
a man. A mystery may be a simple fact, 
but its demonstration lies beyond our 
present limited comprehension. To take 
Christ’s yoke and to learn of Him have for 
consequence, peace with God. The Chris- 
tian is one who holds his doubts in abey- 
ance and says, “I do not know to-day; I 
shall know hereafter.” 

“ Take my yoke, learn of me,” has for its 
outcome, the joy that comes through fellow- 
ship with God. The Christians of earth are 
witnesses to this. A man in loving fellow- 
ship with God has this experience : Doubts 
are forgotten, as problems in mathematics 
are forgotten in the presence of the stars. 

No other sage or seer ever presumed to 
say to humanity, “ Come unto me and I will 
give you rest.” High above all Schools and 
Religions is the Man of Nazareth with the 


Christianity and Pagan Religions. 309 

solution: Intellectual calm is conditioned 
upon fellowship with God. The claims of 
Christ stand or fall, with this challenge and 
invitation. Either He can or cannot quell 
the tempestuous ocean of the intellect with 
the simple command, “ Peace, be still ! ” 

The proof lies in a personal relationship 
to Jesus Christ. The countless myriads of 
Christians who have lived in tender fellow- 
ship with Christ, if conscious in the 
moment of dying, have given a uniform tes- 
timony. The last farewell to loved ones, 
then the calm, simple witness, “ Jesus 
saves me ! ” This is the tribunal of last ap- 
peal. No argument can annul the witness 
of dying lips. Here Christianity rests its 
case; — To live in fellowship with Christ is 
to say, like Thomas, with the last breath, 
“ My Lord and my God ! ” 


THE END. 








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